


Song of the Pyre

by tactfulGnostalgic



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Ashen Romance | Auspistice, Blood, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, F/F, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Mind Control, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Space Opera, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-30 11:04:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 200,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10875459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tactfulGnostalgic/pseuds/tactfulGnostalgic
Summary: The sweep is 9012. The Empire sprawls throughout the galaxy. At its head sits the invulnerable, ancient Empress; at its foot lie legions of soldiers, lawkeepers, and criminals alike. The Imperial Fleet spreads across the twelve star systems, entrusted with keeping the peace by any means necessary. Rumors of revolution run amok.A chronicle of the trial of Vriska Serket, the fall of the First Alternian Empire, and the legislacerator at the heart of both.





	1. Anacrusis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“Members of the Cruelest Bar, also known as legislacerators, pose an interesting question as to the nature of Alternian ethics. Undoubtedly, in any organized empire, it is necessary to have a set of standardized rules, including enforcers of such; and to discourage revolt, it is useful to at least create the illusion of fair treatment under law. But how effective the legislacerators were intended to be — that is, whether their ultimate function was justice or subjugation — remains unanswered by the litany of historical texts that describe their existence. At any rate, the secrets of the Bar were and are reserved to its members, who are quick to offer any prying inquirer the tight end of a noose.”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

** ACT 1 **

 The _S.S. Pyrexia_ cuts the sky over Tethys like a blade through ink. 

Tethys, contrary to what most trolls would believe, is a rather significant planet in its own right; not only was it the four-hundred and fifty-first planet to be admitted to the First Alternian Empire, but it also has the highest export rate of metathorium, a highly potent spaceship fuel, in the known universe. For this reason, it is an exceptionally rich planet that even richer planets have — put bluntly — colonized the high hell out of.

Terezi Pyrope stands on the bridge of the _Pyrexia_ and watches Tethys rotate limply in the light of its single red sun.

The grey lumps and wide, gaping scars of mining quarries remind her distantly of her own planet. The resemblance is only passing; Alternia is much, much larger, and many, many lightsweeps away.

The interior of the _Pyrexia_ is spotless. Viewing windows are set into burnished, dark wood, marbled with pitch stains; the floors gleam silver from repeated scrubbings, slim, chic black lines dividing the tile. The lights pulse gently overhead, flattering light, but dim; the most important passenger, after all, doesn’t need them.

Terezi Pyrope twirls her cane and lifts her face towards the red light of Sol-124 with eyes scarred the same color as the blazing star. 

“Smells like cherries,” she remarks.

One of the ship’s technicians, a scrappy oliveblood with wild horns, eyes her oddly.

“You’ve said, Madame Counselor.”

“It bears repeating. Cherries and clay, this star system. Gross.” She wrinkles her nose. “Not a great flavor combination, by the way. Write that down.”

“Yes, Madame Counselor.” 

The oliveblood half-reaches for a databook to write with, but she gives them a flat look.

“Sorry, Madame Counselor. Hard to tell when you’re joking, sometimes.”

“Wouldn’t be if you had half a sense of humor,” she huffs, and leaves them to do their job. 

The captain is a blueblood pushing the unsavory side of two hundred sweeps, with a clump of hair clinging to the rear of his head that appears to be fleeing the scourge of baldness sweeping the front. His horns jut out nigh-laterally from his temples, giving the unfortunate fellow a perpendicular silhouette. Terezi approaches him from behind and lets her steps fall loudly on the catwalk to his station, a warning she sincerely hopes he appreciates.

He flinches when she makes herself known, anyway. “Captain,” she chirps. “I was under the impression that we’d be leaving half an hour ago.”

“Fuel settling,” he says apologetically. “Undue delay. Unfortunate but unavoidable; premature takeoff would risk combustion in the engine tank, which would —”

“You labor under the impression I care,” she replies, brightly. “I’m sure you handled the situation admirably. Just move my ship, if you please.”

“Itchy feet, Counselor?” The brownblood at the helm smiles at her, which is in and of itself a warrant for no less than seven charges of impertinence and impropriety, but she lets it slide. Merciful, Terezi Pyrope, before anything else.

“Always.” She raps the dashboard, which seems to unnerve the captain, probably due to the number of critical functions that the dashboard controls. “So. ETA on the Sammak System, if you don’t mind, dear man.” 

“Impossible to say. An hour, at least, given the lightspeed jump.”

Her mouth twists. “That’s not a happy number, Captain.”

His eyes skirt over her face, as if deluding himself that she won’t be irritated if he can’t see her. “No, it’s not. However, it’s a safe number, which is the kind of number I’m employed to find.” 

“You do realize that I’m scheduled to meet with _four_ members of the Sammakian Senate in less than an hour, correct, Captain?”

“I did not realize,” he says, but hastily seeks to cover his mistake — “but I do, now, and will attempt to proceed with all possible haste in order to ensure —”

“I hope you also realize,” Terezi tells him seriously, “that should I fail to make my meeting, I will not lie to the members of the Sammakian Senate in assigning the blame for my failure.” 

“Blame?”

“Blame! For I could have _sworn_ — sworn, Captain! — that before we left Tethys, I had told you, ‘Captain — dear Captain — could you have the ship ready for departure in thirty minutes?’ And you said, ‘Absolutely, Lady Pyrope.’” Terezi’s teeth gleam, a tad too visible to be friendly. She enjoys the involuntary shudder that crawls up the captain’s spine at the sight of her. “Do you mean to tell me — Captain — that I have misinterpreted the definition of ‘absolutely’?”

He shakes his head slightly. “No, Lady Pyrope.”

“Do you mean to tell me — _Captain_ — that I have misinterpreted the definition of ‘thirty’?”

“No, Lady Pyrope.”

“Excellent. Good to know I’m not going daft. So do you mean to tell me, Captain,” she says, taking a step closer, close enough that she can smell the sweat coagulating under his neck and over his brow, “that when I go before the four Sammakian Senaterrors, you will be happy to stand beside me, and explain why we have wasted four of the most important politicians in the galaxy’s time?”

“ _No,_ Lady Pyrope.”

“Well, I trust your course of action is clear.” She pats him on the shoulder. “Notify me when we’re in the Sammak System. Pray that it happens in forty minutes or less.”

The captain nods violently. 

Satisfied in her successful pep talk, Terezi spins on her heel and leaves the bridge.

Her quarters are on the back starboard wing of the ship, as far from the bridge as is architecturally possible, and intentionally so. She didn’t care to hear about it every time the ship hit a fixable snag, or every time one of the minor technicians got in a tiff. If the captain needed her, he could use her wrisktop, like a civilized troll. 

She doesn’t make it halfway to her rooms before a klaxon blare almost splits her ears open, and the ship’s artificial intelligence system declares, in the stilted almost-perfect Alternian characteristic of her breed, “SHIP DOCKING.”

Terezi doubles over and claps her hands over her ears until the noise abates somewhat. The auditory warning system, needless to say, was not designed for trolls with sensitive hearing.

When she can hear herself think, she wheels around and sprints for the bridge.

It’s a mess. Technicians dart back and forth from station to station, desperately seeking a reading on the foreign ship currently latching itself onto the _Pyrexia;_ the captain shrieks orders that nobody seems to hear, and a few warning lights activate in the havoc, which Terezi thinks adds to the atmosphere quite nicely. She makes a few attempts to get the captain’s attention, fails. The volume level of the bridge crowds out the very thoughts from her head, rattling around in her cranium like die in a cup, and she can feel the makings of a migraine nesting beneath her skull. 

Terezi fucking hates migraines.

She lifts her cane and brings it down on the iron doorway with all her strength, which doesn’t do any damage, but makes an earsplitting noise. 

“Captain,” she says, very loud and a little dangerous.

That gets their attention.

She points her cane at him, lining up the tip between his eyes. “Tell me,” she orders, with none of the saccharine playfulness of their prior conversation, “why there is someone attempting to dock on my ship.”

The captain is, to her pleasant surprise, too flustered by the current situation to be much bothered by her implicit death threat. “Can’t,” he says, hands flying over the control panel. “Looks to be an Imperial destroyer, _Dreadnought-_ class.”

Terezi taps her teeth with the top of her cane. “All right,” she says. “Thanks, for that. Revision of the question: tell me why a _Dreadnought-_ class Imperial destroyer is attempting to dock on my ship.”

“That’s the million-caegar question, innit?” He flips one of the switches down, and another alarm rings, somewhere, which does nothing to endear him to Terezi. “She hasn’t fired on us, so I wouldn’t say she’s malicious.”

“Brilliant, captain. A ship _seeking to dock_ with us hasn’t _fired_ on us yet, so she must have benign intent. Truly, your intelligence does credit to your craft.” Terezi points at the nearest person who seems to know what they’re doing, the oliveblood with the odd horns. “Million caegars on the line, my dear, do you want to tell me what the fuck is going on?”

The oliveblood hands her the databook, of which Terezi takes a critical lick. “Bit more information on the comm screens,” they say. “ _Dreadnought-_ class destroyers and above are reserved for ruffiannihilators. The ship docking right now’s a model A13, exclusive to colonels. Ran a search for A13’s reported fueling near the Tethys area, refined it to indigo captains, got this name.” They point to a line of print at the bottom of the databook with palpable excitement. “This one’s the _Lady Sapphire._ Belongs to —”

“I know who it belongs to, thanks.” Terezi points at the oliveblood. “This one. Give them a promotion. And a raise. Whichever is least convenient for you, Captain.” She pockets the databook, ignoring the oliveblood’s noise of protest. “You can stop trying to resist it, the ship’s not malicious. I’ll be in the docking bay.” She marches, for the second time that morning, out of the bridge. The room’s attention remains on her until the door shuts behind her.

It would take her only seven minutes to run to the docking bay at a dead sprint, but she makes it a policy never to let anyone on the ship see her moving faster than a leisurely stroll. So instead she walks to the docking bay, taking careful, measured steps, and even whistling, at some points, as if her day hadn’t just been royally interfered with to a horrific degree.

A squad of techies dart past her on her way down. They skid past her before remembering their place, scrambling back to salute her, and then continuing on their hasty way. She wishes they wouldn’t. It’s not like she _cares,_ and if they’re dumb enough to care about ceremony in the middle of what they think is a crisis, they’re not fated for neither an illustrious nor lucrative career in space travel. 

By the time she’s reached the docking bay, the landing party from the _Lady Sapphire_ are already waiting in the airlock, the leader of whom is a pinch too tall for the space and looks rather peeved. His back curves to fit the space, and the tip of one arrowed horn scrapes the roof of the airlock. _Oh, well_ , she thinks. That’s what he gets for inviting himself in. 

She pauses outside the window and beams, waving. “Hello, Colonel Zahhak,” she says. “What a lovely surprise.”

* * *

 

Colonel Equius Zahhak of the Ruffiannihilator Corps of the Imperial Fleet sits like he’s resting his ass on an egg and he’s terrified of getting yolk on his pants.

Terezi supposes that’d be a reasonable way to hold oneself, if one had the strength to punch through a six-inch wall of permacrete, but it looks funny as hell nonetheless.

She struggles to withhold a peal of laughter as he sits down at her hastily assembled tea-table, pinching his teacup between his index finger and thumb as one would fine china, although Terezi’s glassware is all plastic. Despite his best efforts, his hair has come free of its ponytail, and drifts around his face in disorganized, sweaty strands. Even indoors, he refuses to take off his sunglasses, which she assumes must be due to either culling-offense-level photosensitivity or radical douchebaggery. She’s not sure which one she prefers.

“So,” she says, and pretends to take a sip of tea. She hates tea, actually. She only keeps it around because fussy diplomats want something _dignified_ to drink when they’re having important conversations. “Long time no see.”

He furrows his brows, and then sighs. “Very funny, Lady Pyrope.” 

She cackles. “It _is!_ Because, y’know —”

“You’ve never seen me,” he says, waving his hand. “Excellent wit, Counselor.”

“Because I’ve never seen you,” she reiterates, and then adds, “although somehow, I can still tell when you’ve got something up your ass. Relax, Colonel. You pulled a dick move getting here, I’ll tell you that, but I don’t hold grudges.” She tilts her head. “Much.” 

“Indeed. My deepest apologies.” 

“No hard feelings! No hard feelings. I _did_ have a meeting scheduled with a group of Sammakian Senaterrors, but they can troll me if they want my counsel that badly. Bunch of windbags, anyway. I’ve always got time for you, Eq.” 

“Colonel Zahhak,” he says stiffly, “if you would.”

She sighs. “You always did have a kink for ceremony, Mr. Sour Blueberry.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Equius Zahhak and Terezi Pyrope go way back. Way, way back.

She’d hardly passed the Cruelest Bar when she first met him; he was just a soldier, back then, ‘Private Zahhak,’ nothing special at all. A rookie legislacerator and an unremarkable member of the Imperial Fleet. It had been a short mission, and he’d done virtually nothing — assigned as part of her guard, as a training exercise in cooperation for both of them.

They failed miserably. He’d hated her for being a tealblood and still better at everything than him and she’d hated him for being a bigoted ass even when she was better than him at everything, and they’d almost lost the criminal she was pursuing at the time.

She doesn’t know if she’s forgiven him for being a bigoted ass, actually, and she certainly doesn’t think he’s forgiven her for being better than him at everything. But they smile at each other anyway and lie through their teeth about their feelings, because if nothing else, they are _professionals._

“I didn’t say anything,” she says. “Anyway. I trust you didn’t just drop in and make me miss my meeting for the pleasure of my company, flattering as that would be.”

“No. That would be dreadfully improper.”

“Well, yeah, that’s why I — _Colonel.”_ She inclines her head. “You’re skirting around the subject.”

A fresh wave of sweat breaks over his forehead. She grimaces. “No,” he says. “I am not. Skirting. Around anything.”

“You are so. You’re skirting harder than a witness dancing around the subject of their ex-matesprit’s recent murder. You’re skirting harder than a military defector explaining their past to a suspicious customs agent. You’re skirting harder than a con troll being asked to clarify some vague part of their insurance scheme. You’re skirting —”

“I insist you stop,” he orders her, voice wobbling.

“I don’t think I will. You’re skirting harder than a guilty wriggler in front of their lusus at half-past —”

“I insist you stop!”

“I’ll stop when you do. You’re skirting harder than —”

The teacup handle snaps between his fingers, scattering shards of plastic over the table. Terezi stops, more out of shock than genuine fear. He tenses, horror written over his features.

She bursts out laughing. “Oh my God,” she snickers. “You — your _face_ —”

“Lady Pyrope,” he insists. “I have important business.” 

She slumps back in her chair and gestures airily with her cane. “Then _get_ to the business _,_ ” she says, peering over the top of her glasses, “Colonel.” 

Confronted with her gaze, he, as many often do, freezes up, and doesn’t speak for a few uncomfortable moments. Upon recovering, he busies himself brushing together the teacup shards. “I have an assignment,” he murmurs. “Your next case. Handed down from Magistragedy Kishar herself.”

Terezi knits her fingers over the top of her cane. “Curious,” she says. “Usually, when my boss wants me to do something, she shoots me a memo. On that automated messaging system. Which we invented. About a hundred sweeps ago. And subsequently popularized.” 

“Yes,” he says, his face crumpling with the concentration it takes not to break anything else on the table with his meaty fingers, “but this assignment is distinct.”

“So distinct she couldn’t even send me a quick note that you were coming before you barged onto my ship?” That sounded more irate than it should have. She chastises herself.

“I believe she was concerned you would run away,” Equius notes, and Terezi’s eyebrows climb for her hairline.

“Really.” 

“An unlikely fear,” he concludes, something like a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth, and Terezi feels a minuscule ember of affection flare in the cold, pitiless void of regard she harbors for Equius Zahhak. “But nonetheless one she possessed. I was sent to ensure that did not happen.”

“Eq. _Eq._ Do I look like I’m running?” She waves her hand in welcome. “Just give me a name and a list of crimes, and I’ll work my magic. Have them swinging in a week, two, tops.” She’s in much better spirits about all this. The ordeal of Equius’ appearance is much easier to swallow when it’s only a bunch of formal wrapping paper for a new assignment. 

“No,” he says. “I apologize. I failed to convey accurately what was required of you.” He pours himself a new cup of tea and lifts it to his mouth with trembling hands. “You are to provide defensive argument for your new client.” 

Terezi’s jaw drops. “Colonel,” she says, “in a courtblock, the word defense itself is —”

“Offensive,” he finishes. Her cheek twitches in irritation. “I am aware.”

“So?” She lifts her hands incredulously. “What do you want me to do?”

“I am under the impression that Magistragedy Kishar wanted you to offer fair counsel,” he suggested. “Argue in such a way that the jury might lessen your client’s sentence.”

“Is she off her goddamn mind?”

“Pyrope,” he says, stark horror in his voice. “Magistradey Kishar is a person of utmost importance and rank to the Cruelest Bar —”

“Honored be her image, yeah, et cetera, whatever.” Terezi waves off his concerns. “Forgive me. I was a little upset that one of the premier pillars of the institution has apparently _forgotten_ the foundation of the law.”

“The foundation of the law is justice,” Equius points out, “is it not?”

“Yes. Of course. Obviously,” she snaps.

“And you are a servant of the law, are you not?”

“Last time I checked.”

“So you serve justice, do you not?”

“Entertaining as I find this little checklist over what my job entails, Equius —”

“My point being,” he continues stubbornly, “can you not serve justice in such a way that mercy becomes a natural choice?”

Terezi rolls her eyes. “Sure. Let me know if you want cholerbears to fly anytime soon, too, I’ll get right on that.”

“You are being deliberately impudent. Cease at once.” 

“Ah, good, you noticed. I was worried I was erring on the side of subtlety.” She shoved back her chair and stood. “Tell Magistragedy Kishar that she can keep her _client_. I’ll be negotiating a trade route with the Senaterrors of the Sammak System, thank you.”

She jabs a button beside the door, and it slides open. Equius remains in his seat, examining the remainder of his teacup with odd gravity. 

“Seven hundred and fifty-three convictions,” he says. “Nine acquittals.” 

Terezi pauses in the doorway.

“Good memory.” 

“Yes.” He takes the compliment without gratitude. “A ninety-eight percent success rate.”

“The number rounds up to ninety-nine, actually.” 

“Hmm.” The sound is neither affirming nor contradictory. “The highest of any living member of the Bar.” He reaches for a cube of sugar and drops it delicately into his cup. “Yet one has to wonder about those nine trolls.”

Terezi’s hands clench and unclench on the handle of her cane. “Bad juries,” she says lightly. “Everybody gets them.”

“I’m sure. You, apparently, less than most. Or perhaps you are very good at compensating. I don’t know; I don’t make it my business to know the mechanisms of the courtblock. I like to keep my hands clean.” This is the version of Equius Zahhak she hates the most: smug, but just pretentious enough to pretend that he’s humble. 

“No; you just do our dirty work.” Terezi leans casually on her chair. “And run errands for us.” 

He looks over his sunglasses. The dark ring of indigo around his pupils unnerves her a bit in its hue, much lower than most trolls’ usually are; it’s like his pupils are trying to swallow the color in his eyes. 

“Indeed,” he concedes at length, although not without an edge to his tone. “Which us brings us back around to the topic, I suppose.”

“Mm.”

“You have demonstrated considerable skill in condemning your clients; I believe the Magestragedy wishes to know whether you are capable of the inverse. At least, she seemed to suggest that this would be an evaluation of your ability, one way or another.” Equius shrugs, an ungainly movement that shuffles his enormous suit. “If you refuse, at any rate, it will be sufficient answer.”

“Ah,” she says, in a sudden moment of clarity. “You’re trying to bait me.”

“No. I’m telling you the facts.”

“Yes. And trying to bait me.” She lifts her chin. “I don’t believe that the Magistragedy said anything about evaluating me at all.”

“Believe whatever you want, Counselor.” Equius plants his hands on his knees and pushes himself to his feet. “These are the facts.”

She wrinkles her nose. “So you keep saying.”

“So I will continue saying until you accept them.” He sidles past her into the doorway and manages to look insufferable and clumsy at the same time. “At the very least, though, I’d think you’d want to see the details of the case before you reject it.”

Terezi drums her fingers on her cane, sighs, pinches her nose. Visions of a pissed-off Magistragedy and assignments to distant, barren planets in backwater systems dance in her mind’s eye, each one of them more convincing than anything Equius has said in his life.

“Fine,” she says, curtly. “But if you’re shitting me, Equius, I swear —”

“Colonel Zahhak,” says Colohel Zahhak, the enormous douchebag. “And I do not shit you, or anyone else, thank you.”

“Whatever! Whatever.” She gestures broadly. “Give me the client’s name.”

He clears his throat, apparently nervous again. “Vriska Serket,” he says.

Terezi’s fingers fall still on her cane.

 

* * *

 

They made it into a drinking game, back at the Academy: take a shot every time Vriska Serket’s name appears in the casebook, by the end of the night you’re too drunk to read straight. Terezi had memorized them all, once, just to prove that she could.

**CRIMINAL PROFILE NO. 8612**

**CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS OF VRISKA SERKET**

AFFRAY

ASSAULT

ASSAULT OCCASIONING ACTUAL BODILY HARM

ASSAULT WITH INTENT TO RESIST ARREST

ATTEMPTED MURDER

BATTERY

BLACKMAIL

BLASPHEMOUS LIBEL

BODY SNATCHING

BOMB THREAT

BREACH OF THE PEACE, FIRST DEGREE

BREATH OF THE PEACE, SECOND DEGREE

BREATH OF THE PEACE, THIRD DEGREE

BURGLARY

CALUNNIA

CAPITAL MURDER

CHEATING

CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD

CONSPIRACY TO CORRUPT PUBLIC MORALS

CONSPIRACY TO TRESPASS

CONSPIRACY TO EFFECT A PUBLIC MISCHIEF

CONSPIRACY TO MURDER

CRIMINAL CONVERSION

CULPABLE AND RECKLESS CONDUCT

DEATH THREAT

DEFAMATION

DISORDERLY CONDUCT

DISPOSAL OF A CORPSE WITH INTENT TO OBSTRUCT OR PREVENT A CORONER’S REQUEST

DRUG POSSESSION

EMBEZZLEMENT

EMPLOYMENT FRAUD

ENCOURAGING AND ASSISTING CRIME

ENDANGERMENT

EXTORTION

FAILURE TO APPEAR BEFORE COURT

FAILURE TO OBEY A RUFFIANNIHILATOR

FAILURE TO OBEY A LEGISLACERATOR

FRAUD

IMPERSONATION OF A FLEET OFFICIAL

INTIMIDATION

LOITERING

MURDER IN THE FIRST DEGREE

MURDER IN THE SECOND DEGREE

MURDER IN THE THIRD DEGREE

MUTINY

NONCONSENSUAL MIND CONTROL IN THE FIRST DEGREE

NONCONSENSUAL MIND CONTROL IN THE SECOND DEGREE

OUTRAGING PUBLIC DECENCY

PERVERTING THE COURSE OF JUSTICE

POSSESSION OF STOLEN GOODS

PUBLIC INTOXICATION

PUBLIC NUISANCE

RECKLESS BURNING

RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT

ROBBERY

SABOTAGE

SEDITION

SOLICITATION TO MURDER

TREACHERY

TREASON (PETTY)

TREASON (HIGH)

TRESPASSING

TROLLSLAUGHTER

UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY

USURY

VANDALISM

 

* * *

 

Terezi gets a third of the way down the list before Equius stops her.

“I am aware of the charges,” he says. 

“Why in the name of all that’s Empress-fearing and just would I try to get her _acquitted?”_

He shrugs. “You pose a question for the Magistragedy.” 

“Funny, because I thought I heard myself posing it to _you,_ Colonel, so make like a cluckbeast and squawk.” 

He aligns the teacups with her kettle, twisting the handles into identical positions. Fastidious. How bureaucratic. “Strength,” he begins, with the airs and graces of a ministormentor, “is built from hardship. There are uses to adversity, and they do not —”

“—reveal themselves until tested. I know Troll Sonia Sotomayor, Colonel. I attended her seven hundredth wriggling day party.” Terezi leans forward. “If the Magistragedy wanted an assessment of my abilities, there are better ways than to present an impossible situation.”

“To draw victory from the impossible was a skill of yours, I thought, Counselor.”

“Flattery won’t win you points.” She rubs at the flaring ache in her skull. “And what are _you_ doing here, anyway? You seem a little overqualified for prisoner delivery.” 

“I was responsible for her arrest.”

It flabbergasts Terezi to the point where she actually stutters. “You — you arrested her?”

“Yes.”

She blinks, something she only ever does out of habit. “How did — _you_ —”

“My team is highly skilled.”

“No, yeah,” she says, “it’s just — it’s not your jurisdiction.”

The formality seems to throw him. “My jurisdiction is whatever the Magistragedy deems it to be,” he says, folding his hands behind his back. “And in this instance, it is the lawful capture and incarceration of Vriska Serket.”

“Apart from the matter of how the hell you got — she’s escaped thirteen attempted arrests. _Thirteen.”_

“Yes.” She’s aware that she’s inflating his ego; she can’t help it.

“She’s listed as a — a _forfeited offender,_ Equius, do you know what that means? It means that legislacerators are _discouraged_ from going after her! Because she’s killed every one we sent!”

“Yes.” If she didn’t know him better, she’d think he was smiling. “We lost many ruffiannihilators in the attempt.” 

“But you got her.”

“I have her in custody.” 

Terezi’s spine goes rigid.

“Custody.”

“Yes.”

“As in, I’m sure, a max security prison, floating on some distant, isolated planet?”

He shakes his head, and her stomach sinks.

“No,” she says. “You — you took her into _your_ custody. Of course. You leadpanned dunce.”

His jaw tenses. “She is absolutely secure. For her to walk free of her current cellblock would require nothing less than an act of the Handmaid.”

“So she’s in _prison_. Because, you realize, a ruffiannihilator’s holding cell _does not constitute,_ in a rational or legal sense, an ‘absolutely secure’ point.”

“You are unduly agitated. I order you to cease at once.”

“Really,” she said, a high laugh bubbling up out of her throat. “Because if I didn’t know better, I’d think that you just brought an _interstellar war criminal_ onto my ship! In which case, Equius, I’d find my agitation to be quite justified!”

“She will not escape,” he insists, and she drags a hand down her face.

“Yes, you’ve made your beliefs on the matter clear. What _I_ want to know is why you thought it was a good idea —”

“I will summon her to you,” he interrupts, tapping something on his wristtop. “I trust that your ship has an adequate holding cell.”

“No! Not for someone like this!”

Her voice pitches adolescent. Taking a long, slow breath of air, she adds, much steadier, “It’s not that I don’t trust in your soldiers’ competence, Colonel Zahhak.”

“I was not under the impression that you respected my job, generally.”

“Well, good, self-delusion is a fool’s sport. But I would prefer it if a criminal known for hijacking government ships were not intimately acquainted with mine.”

His expression fluctuates from amused to vindictive and back again. “I trust in your competence, Lady Pyrope,” he says, and she _hates_ him. In the most platonic, non-concupiscent, ‘wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire’ manner possible. 

“Fine,” she says, setting her teeth. “Fine. Tell Magistragedy Kishar that I accept the assignment.”

Equius laughs, a sound that stumbles from his mouth, ungainly. “She presumes you _accept_ ,” he says. “The way to demonstrate your compliance is to _begin_.”

 

* * *

 

The architects of the _Pyrexia_ designed its holding cell to invoke terror.

Layers of barbed wire and steel bars line the block, even the roof. Red lights droop from the ceiling and dangle low over the lone steel table, which is bolted to the floor. The door is four-inch thick durocarbonite, sealed with six locks — three requiring physical keys, and three requiring a four-digit entry code. It’s painted spotless black, and the prisoner’s chair holds them low to the ground. There is only one chair. The interrogator always stands. 

Terezi waits inside the cellblock, standing.

Equius promised to be back with the prisoner promptly, although ‘prompt’ appears to be a relative term. Twenty minutes have passed without sign of him or Serket, and Terezi idly entertains the idea that the prisoner has killed his team and made off on the _Lady Sapphire._ She tries and fails to muster surprise. 

Footsteps thud outside the door. Terezi fixes her gaze on the wall opposite her, turns her back to the doorway, and waits for them to bring her in.

Vriska Serket stumbles over the door with a violent curse and the clack of heel on permacrete.

She’s a tall, broad woman, with muscle-strung limbs and wide hips under layers of expensive silk. A scarlet sash flutters around her hips, and a heavy black overcoat with cerulean trim is draped over her shoulders, flapping behind her like waterfowl’s oil-slick wings. Her hair floated loose in tangled snarls over her shoulders, over her waist; from the crown of her head, asymmetrical horns sprouted, one forked, one bent. A pair of glasses sat askew on her nose. 

She halts and examines Terezi. In one iris, in leu of a larger pupil, seven black dots move as a swarm. It would be unnerving if Terezi was the kind to be unnerved.

“So you’re Pyrope,” she says.

“Yes.” Terezi points to the chair. “Sit.” 

Vriska saunters over to the table and leans on it. Her prongcuffs jangle as she flops over on the stool provided, tossing up her legs on the table. “You know how to treat a girl, I’ll tell you that. You know your ruffiannihilators had me in three sets of prongcuffs on the journey here? _Three.”_

Terezi doesn’t bother correcting the possessive with reference to Equius’ crew; it suits her to appear in charge of the whole operation. “What happened to the other two?”

She waggles her fingers and winks. “The voyage from New Bellona, incidentally, is just shy of long enough to pick three locks.”

“And just long enough to pick two, I suppose.”

“Bingo.” Vriska tries to put her hands behind her head, can’t quite twist far enough, and settles for folding her hands in her lap. “Holy shit, what happened to your _eyes?”_

Terezi is pleased by the question. “Gift from the Handmaid,” she says airily. “I get along without them just fine.”

“Whatever, don’t tell me, then.”

“I had no intention to.” Terezi rests her weight on her cane. “The more interesting question is what happened to _yours.”_

Vriska smirks. “Gift from the Handmaid.”

“Ah. I understand.” Terezi takes a measured step forward. “You are under some delusion about hows this —” —she gestures between them — “works. _I_ am under no impetus to answer your questions! You, on the other hand, have a vast _array_ of reasons to answer mine.” 

“Vast,” Vriska imitates. “I have _one,_ and it’s that I’d rather you don’t stick that sword in between my oculars.” She points at Terezi’s cane.

“Incorrect! There are a multiplicity of death threats on your shoulders, many of which may take place even should you refuse to answer my questions. The reason that you will tell me what I want to know,” Terezi says, resting her fingers lightly atop the table, “is because I, unlike any other individual in this godforsaken universe, barring the very Handmaid herself, have the capacity to remove every one of them.” 

Surprise flickers over Vriska’s face, but vanishes as soon as it registers. “You gonna undo all that shit I’ve done, blind girl?” Her smirk is hard, cynical. “Because that’s the only way I’m walking free.”

“You will walk free if I wish it. _That_ is the sole condition of your liberation.” Terezi leans even further forward, bringing her face within a foot of Vriska’s.

Vriska’s eyes skirt over her glasses, scarred corneas, pointed horns. After a moment’s pause, she snorts. “You’re sporting a whopper of a God complex if I ever saw one, Counselor.”

Terezi twirls around and paces the length of the cellblock. “All right. Let’s try a different tac.” She pivots and unsheaths a quarter of her sword. “You answer my questions, and I don’t perform impromptu plastic surgery on a cellblock table.” Her smile is unwavering. 

“There you go,” Vriska says, albeit with some unease. “Now you’re speaking my language.”

“I still don’t hear an answer, curiously. How do you feel about your nose, Miss Serket? Are you terribly attached to it? In a non-cartilaginous sense, I mean.” 

“Fine. Do your dumb interrogation, then.” She leans her elbows on the table. “Not like there’s anything about me you don’t know, anyway.”

“Let’s start with what you think I know about you.” Terezi keeps walking, refusing to look at Vriska.

“Uh, whatever’s in my profile. Crimes. All of ‘em. Or the ones I got caught for, at least. Name, caste, associates. Lusus.” The last one trips off her tongue and is hastily overrun by the next thing in the list: “Ship, crew, death count. Identifying features.” She points to her eye. “Surprises me that you don’t know what this is, for that matter.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Vision eightfold,” Vriska explains, pinching her forefinger and thumb together in a mimicry of a lens. “Lets me see through _anything._ For example.” She nods to the door. “There’s an indigo out there who’s called for three towels in the past five minutes because he’s scared shitless I’m going to break out again.” Her smile is vicious. “He’s got the right idea.”

“ _If_ you find a way to break out of those cuffs, you’ll have the pleasure of fighting _me,_ Miss Serket. Your reputation, though admirable, does not suggest that you will have any degree of success in that endeavor.”

“What does my reputation say, then?”

“That you fight like a cholerbear with its ass on fire,” Terezi says frankly, “and your successes are half as often accidents as they are intentional. Your saving grace has been, up until late, your quite exceptional luck.”

“So what if I get lucky again?”

“Luck is a poor match for skill. You could have all the luck in the world, Miss Serket, it wouldn’t —” 

“Captain,” Vriska snaps.

“Pardon?”

“I lead a vessel. Bought it with my own aureii. It’s _Captain_ Serket.”

“Fair enough.” Terezi tilts her head, a small concession, but one that seems to gratify her captive. She stops pacing and rubs the top of her cane thoughtfully. “Do you think I’m going to kill you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You haven’t done it yet.” 

“I might be biding my time. Waiting for the proper moment. Maybe I enjoy ceremony.”

“First — maybe — but second of all, the ‘proper moment’ for an interstellar criminal is _immediately._ You’re not going to kill me. You’ve got something riding on me.” Vriska hunched over the table, staring at Terezi curiously. “What is it? A bet?”

“I don’t bet, Captain.”

“Some kind of test, then. Do you have someone you want to impress? Can’t imagine they’d be impressed by you sparing _me_ — don’t imagine you’re fixing to help me of your own free will, either, on account of you don’t seem to like me at all. A challenge. Someone’s making you keep me alive.” She cocks her head. “A friend of mine?”

“Do you have that many powerful friends?”

A wry smile. “No, not really.”

“There you go. And you’re overcomplicating things. I have to keep you alive for trial.”

“I’ve already been tried. I’ve been scheduled to hang seven times.” 

“The Judiciary Act of 7781 states that criminals must be retried if two sweeps pass since the date of sentencing and neither whole nor part of the sentence is implemented.” Terezi waves a hand at Vriska. “You are alive; ergo, neither whole nor part of your sentence has been implemented, and your most recent trial was in the Dark Season of 9010.”

“ _Somebody’s_ a data whore.”

“I keep myself informed.”

“Right. To get this clear — you’re not killing me,” Vriska says skeptically, “so I can die properly, later.” 

“Correct, albeit incompletely so. I am also keeping you alive because I do not intend you to die in the arms of a noose.” She steeples her fingers. “The Magistragedy — for whatever reason — seems to believe you deserve an acquittal. So.” Vriska’s eyebrows lift. “Acquitted you will be.”

“Isn’t that a perversion of justice, or whatever? Somebody else making the call?”

“My employer, the Magistragedy, justice incarnate, has made a decision with regards to your fate, and has directed me to do my job in a certain manner accordingly. I will not distort the facts. I will not lie for you. I will merely present your case as it best suits me to do, and let the venerable jury make natural conclusions.” Terezi leers. “Questions?”

Vriska rattles her prongcuffs. “You happen to have the key to these?”

Terezi’s lips thin.

“You were right,” she says. “If it weren’t for the Magistragedy’s interest, you’d probably be swinging pretty from the nearest doorframe.” 

Vriska catches her tongue between her teeth and grins. “You come on strong, Counselor.”

“You have no idea.” She bares her fangs to match Vriska’s. “You haven’t even seen me in the courtblock, Captain.” 

“Looking forward to it.” 

Terezi laughs without intending to. “I’m sure you are.” 

“I mean it. Not often I meet a legislacerator with half a pan between her ears.” Vriska smiles, and it’s only slightly mocking. “It’s a pleasant surprise.” 

Terezi opens her mouth to retort — and the ship shudders violently as a foreign object collides with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _To catch perfection with a net and rod_  
>  _White whales haunt your vision and you lose sight of what you've got_  
>  _You are unshakeable in your self-belief_  
>  _Just like all madmen who succumb to the deep_  
>  —Troll The Hoosiers, _The Wheels Fell Off_


	2. Venturis Ventis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“The Most Righteous and Divine Church of Mirth, or more colloquially, the ‘juggalo’ sect, were by far the most organized and powerful religion on Alternia or its colonies. This was primarily because their bylaws held no standards of conduct, except, notably, that standards of conduct were to be held in general contempt. Not until the passage of the Most Mirthful and Delightful Union of Powers Act of 6723, joining the church and the Cruelest Bar as twin branches of law enforcement, would there be any effort to tame the wild juggalos; even then, for the duration of the Act’s tenure, the Bar was far from a successful check against clown tyranny. Instead, the Church ascended above the law itself, separate and independent from the rules it enforced, and ultimately, as corrupt and disparate from its lofty ideology as the Empire itself.”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

Terezi slides eight feet before grounding her cane on the floor and halting herself. Vriska’s table is bolted down, and thus remains unmoved; the same cannot be said for Vriska’s chair, or Vriska, both of which fly backward and collide with the rear cell wall. Amid Vriska’s swearing, and the newly returned klaxons, Terezi can hardly hear herself think, and what thoughts she does have are hard to distinguish from the running undercurrent of hot _fear._

She quashes it and kicks the door open. “Stay,” she orders Vriska, and draws her sword. A team of ruffiannihilators sprint past the cell. Whether toward the trouble or away from it, she doesn’t know. 

“Like hell I’m staying.”

“You’re still a criminal in times of emergency, Captain.” 

“And I don’t fancy being stuck in a locked block when whatever just hit your ship reaches this wing!” Vriska stumbles to her feet. “Let me come with you.”

“No.” Terezi plants herself in the door and holds Vriska at swordpoint. “I will deal with the problem. You _stay._ ”

“What are you gonna do?” She spreads her arms. “I’d rather suffer the ugly end of that there weapon, Counselor, than die in a spacewreck.”

“A demonstration of your poor judgment. And I have no intention of letting this become a spacewreck. I happen to be on this spaceship, you see.” Terezi tries to slam the door; Vriska wedges her boot in it, grunting when the edge comes down on her toe.

“Then let me help.”

“Ha! And you think I’ll take it on blind faith that you won’t head for the hills first chance you’re near an escape pod?”

“I think you’ll take it on faith that I’m more interested in not dying than the alternative!” Vriska shoves the door open a few inches. “My word’s worth more than you think it is.”

“A quarter-drachma is worth more than a caegar. Neither is valuable.” 

“You get that out of a book, or are you just naturally pithy?”

“I don’t have _time_ for your blackflirting,” Terezi snaps. “I —”

“Blackflirting? You think this is blackflirting? Dear girl, you haven’t _seen_ blackflirting if you think —”

“I rather have, thanks,” she says, “and you’ll _stay here.”_

“Not if you can’t get me into the cell,” Vriska points out. She wriggles her boot further into the door. “Would you rather waste time wrestling me back in, or go find what’s poking holes in your hull?”

She quirks an eyebrow. The challenge is written in the aggressive tension of her body, the protective hunch of her shoulders. 

Terezi releases a growl of frustration and holds open the door. “Make the wrong move,” she begins, and Vriska waves a dismissive hand.

“And you’ll cut my face off. Point taken.” She waggles her fingers. “I’ll be a lot more helpful if I have freedom of movement, though, Counselor.”

“Don’t push your luck.” 

“Point taken,” she says cheerfully, and steps out of the cell. 

The ship is still tilting with the force of the blow, turning a flat hallway into an uphill climb. Terezi makes her way down, skidding and slipping on the glossier parts of the floor. Emergency lights blaze at the corners of the hall, letting Vriska more or less efficiently, although she still careens into the walls when the ship cants one way or another. Terezi moves with distinctly more grace, leaping and sliding with the bucking floor.

Another ruffiannihilator passes them, pausing to give Vriska a startled look; he moves to draw his specibus, and she punches him in the face, knocking him out. 

“Serket,” Terezi says, pained.

“Add it to the list of charges, Counselor. He had it coming.”

“He did _not_ ,” she says, but it lacks vigor. They’re approaching the docking bay, where the sirens are increasing in volume; she rounds the corner and finds a whole swath of Equius’ team, including the troll himself, lining up aside the loading airlock.

“Counselor,” he begins, and then catches sight of Vriska. His eyes bulge from his head. “What is the prisoner —”

“Don’t busy your pointy little head over it, Colonel,” Vriska says. “ _Counselor_ and I made a special —”

“Shut up.” Terezi shoves in between a pair of burly women to approach him. “What’s going on?”

“Ship docking,” Equius says. “Knocked the _Sapphire_ out of the way. Now it’s trying to load, but we’ve secured the airlock — they’re not getting in unless they — pardon the language — blow the damned door apart.” 

Vriska whistles. “Better watch your tongue there, Zahhak, nobody likes a fucking foulmouth.”

“My apologies —”

“Don’t apologize to the prisoner,” Terezi says irritably. “Tell me who’s trying to board my ship. For the _second_ time today,” she adds pointedly, narrowing her eyes at him.

“Unidentified vehicle. It’s a _Makara_ -class cutter, callsign _Godspeed._ A cursory scan revealed little else of note.”

“For those of us who don’t speak engineer,” Terezi prompts.

“Small, fast ship. Fantastic targeting on the cannons, no power behind them; dual fuel cells for long-distance space travel, terrible shield generators. The _Pyrexia_ should bulldoze her,” Vriska says, offhandedly.

Terezi’s eyebrows climb of their own accord.

Vriska shrugs. “You don’t become captain of a spaceship without knowing shit about spaceships.”

“She is correct,” Equius concedes, sounding as if if he’d prefer to be held at gunpoint than admit it. 

“Right. Well, then, shouldn’t be an issue to shoot her out of the sky. Someone alert the gunmen.”

“Can’t work,” says Vriska. “They’re too close. High danger of rebound fire off the shields.”

“I thought you said the shields were bad!”

“Yeah, but you can’t whip out your heavyweight cannons on a ship that’s fifty yards away, can you? No targeting accuracy. Gotta use your target lasers for that. Lasers rebound worse than your highblood ex-matesprit.”

Terezi snorts; Equius looks horrified.

“You will retract —”

“She’ll retract exactly jack shit,” Terezi says. “ _You’ll_ tell me who typically uses a _Makara-_ class cutter.” 

He bristles. “I will remind you,” he says stiffly, “that of the officers on this vessel, I outrank you by a significant —”

She grabs his collar and hauls him down to eye level, forcing him to bend almost in half. “You outrank exactly _nobody_ ,” she says. “This is my ship. Everyone here is employed by _me,_ and if not me, then by the Cruelest Bar of the Alternian Empire, the leaders of which are annually paid twice what you make in five sweeps _._ Your jurisdiction ended when you stepped through the door. You boarded and entered said vessel without permission from the captain, or warrant of search and entry from aforementioned Bar, which is a Class-A infraction of the Alternian Penal Code and grounds for suit. It is in your _very_ best interests to ensure that I do not file suit.” She releases him and he springs back to his full height.

“Impudence,” he mutters darkly, but does not argue.

“Yes,” she agrees, “very much so. My question, if you would, Colonel.”

“The _Makara-_ class is reserved for aids and attendants of the Church,” he says, and she knows he’s in a mood because he doesn’t use the Church’s full name. It’s a good thing he didn’t. They don’t have the time.

“Ah,” Vriska says, giving voice to the room’s general mood. “Fuck.”

Terezi raps on the airlock door. “There’s a subjugglator out there,” she says, made repetitive by disbelief.

“In our best estimate, yes.”

“Wonderful. _Wonderful_.” Terezi rubs the fore of her cranium. “Well. Is there a chance they’re _not_ here to kill all of us and use our blood to inscribe their wicked prophecies?”

Equius’ mouth twists. “If there is,” he says, “it is exceptionally small.”

“Right. Of course it is. That’s fine.” She sighs. “How long will the airlock hold?”

“Indefinitely, assuming that they do not have advanced combustibles.”

“And if they do have advanced combustibles?”

He checks his timepiece. “A matter of seconds.”

“Sounds like a great time to run,” Terezi says. “What do you think, Colonel?”

“I think it sounds like a great time to run,” Vriska pipes up eagerly.

“Thank you, Captain. I’m not taking off your prongcuffs.”

Her expression sours.

Colonel Equius Zahhak hesitates for a split second. It is too much.

The door flies off its hinges and collides with the wall, crushing two ruffiannihilators before they have time to realize their imminent death. The smell of Faygo and greasepaint pervades the hallway. Terezi breathes through her mouth and attempts to ignore it.

A subjugglator steps through the airlock. He moves like a praying mantis, always hunched forward, and the tips of his long, wavy horns scrape at the ceiling. Layers of black curls erupt from his white-painted scalp, and dark circles stain his eye sockets and the skin around his lips. His eyes appear starkly orange, sickly orange, juxtaposed with the waxen paint and withered skin. Still, he carries himself like a young troll, and his horns are too short to be much older than thirty, forty sweeps.

“Hello, most wicked bitchsister,” he tells Terezi, and she sets her teeth. 

“Do I know you?”

It’s hard to concentrate over his odor, which fills the corridor in blinding hues of purple and black. 

“Aw, don’t up and be that way, little lawtroll. You know me.” 

“Perhaps I arrested an acquaintance of yours? I am a very busy woman; you’ll need to refresh me.” 

His expression darkens. “Maybe,” he agrees. “Maybe I need to be all fuckin’ FORCEFULLY REFRESHING your MOTHERFUCKING MEMORY.” 

He advances, club aloft. Equius, in what Terezi considers perhaps his one redemptive act, steps in front of her and draws a bow.

“You are hereby formally ordered,” he says, voice trembling, “to cease and desist.” 

“What are you gonna motherfuckin’ do, shitblood? YOU GONNA VIOLATE THE MOST RIGHTEOUS? You gonna use that there twig to stop me?” The subjugglator’s hand flits out, quick as a featherbeast, and grips Equius by the throat. “You can’t do _shit_.”

Equius struggles, briefly, and sags. “My apologies,” he says, and Terezi wants to slap him. “I did not mean to offend —”

“Equius,” she hisses, “you spineless sack of cluckbeast shit —”

“No offense taken, little bro,” the subjugglator coos. “But — and it ain’t nothing personal, man — you’re in my motherfuckin’ way, ALL THE MOTHERFUCKIN’ SAME.” 

He snaps Equius’ neck like a wafer between his fingers, and the ruffiannihilator falls limp. The subjugglator drops him dispassionately, and his weight strikes the deck with enough force to make the hallway’s foundations shudder. 

Terezi grimaces but says nothing. He turns to her, wearing a wide smile.

“You rememberin’ me yet,” he says, “most heretical little sister?”

“No,” she lies. 

He lifts his club. 

“Shame,” he says offhandedly, and swings.

She meets the weapon halfway between them with her sword, a strike that catches him off-guard, allowing her to press the advantage. He replies by shaking her sword off his club, a casual ripple of movement that nearly sends her flying; another forward step, and he’s close enough to bludgeon her between the horns. It occurs to her that she is in a very bad position.

Vriska makes an aggravated noise, and, when the subjugglator rears back for a third strike, she darts forth and seizes Terezi’s elbow, hauling her out of range. 

Terezi stumbles and breaks into a run, Vriska tugging her along. The subjugglator snarls and enters pursuit, heavy steps rattling the floor behind them. 

They’re running uphill, but it gives them a considerable head start. Terezi sheaths her sword and uses her hands to push off the wall, scrambling upwards in a half-scamper half-climb. 

“Pro tip,” Vriska says, with much exasperation. “The best strategy for fighting a subjugglator is _don’t_.” 

“Noted. However, it seems an increasingly inevitable consequence.”

“Who is that asshole, anyway?” She tosses a look over her shoulder, shudders, and climbs faster. “You know him?”

“Barely, and to some extent, unwillingly.” Terezi bats aside a potted plant that has begun to slide down the floor. “His name is Gamzee Makara. We were briefly affiliated.”

Vriska’s eyebrows climb for her horns. “ _Affili—_ you pailed?”

“I am absolutely _fascinated_ by how you think this is any of your business.”

“No, I just figured, he seems all interested in your history, and conciliatory breakups usually don’t cause that kind of antagonism — and I can’t figure anyone would want to get all pale and mushy with a juggalo, anyway — red or black?”

“Black! Obviously! Even at my lowest point, I wasn’t flushed for a _clown!”_

Vriska risks another look. Her lips tighten, but she shrugs.

“I can see it,” she concedes. “He’s pretty loathsome.”

“It was brief. And long ago. And I’m frankly concerned that he remembers it with such clarity.”

“You that good in spades?”

Terezi rounds the corner and tugs Vriska down a smaller, perpendicular hall. “Apparently.”

Vriska says nothing, but whistles, low and long.

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

Gamzee’s weight thunders on the floor behind them. Terezi imagines she can feel his breath, rasping against the back of her neck, hot and foul and familiar. She shudders reflexively.

“Faster,” she orders Vriska, and puts on an extra burst of speed. She shoots through the approaching door and slams the control pad, shutting it behind them; faced with a T-intersection, she turns left and keeps running. 

“You think,” Vriska pants, “you think the ruffiannihilators — that they’ll stick around after their boss is gone?”

“Doubtful, if they’ve got a lick of common sense.” Terezi pokes in the entrance code for a door and slips through, shutting it behind them. Gamzee’s footsteps have at last abated, and she slows to a brisk stride to catch her breath. “We’re on our own.”

Vriska shrugs. “That’s fine,” she says. “I’ve survived —” 

“Don’t say ‘I’ve survived worse.’ Most dead people have survived worse.” Terezi pauses for breath and braces herself against the wall. “I didn’t think I’d ever smell that again. It’s awful.” 

“Amen,” Vriska mutters. She gestures to her nose. “So, when you say ‘smell.’”

“Now?”

“I’m curious. Sue me.” 

Terezi plucks off her glasses, waves them expressively. “I’m blind. Can’t see a thing. Regardless, if you try anything funny, I’ll know about it. So don’t.” She settles them back over her nose. “Questions?”

“That’s cool as shit,” Vriska says, frank. “You have a psionic sense or something? I thought that was only for yellowbloods.”

“I don’t have psionic sense. Or any other kind of preternatural ability. I can smell what you’re doing.” She taps her ears. “I’ve got four perfectly functional senses, and I can do more with them than most can do with five. Any other questions?”

“A couple.”

“Great. Insert them into your gaping windhole and keep them there, because I’m not a schoolfeeder.” She peers around the corner, and then sidles into the perpendicular hall. “Follow me.”

Vriska follows without comment, which Terezi appreciates.

They cross the ship in short bursts of speed, creeping slow around corners. It’s eerily silent. The scent of Faygo pervades everything, everywhere, the very clothes on Terezi’s back. Tension scrabbles its claws over the ridges of Terezi’s spine, sewing anxiety into the fabric of her thinkpan. She shoves it down with practiced ease. 

The entry to the bridge appears to have been left well alone, frosted glass sparkling and unmarred under the ship’s fluorescents. Relieved, Terezi taps in another entrance code and darts through, an order swelling on the tip of her tongue.

She stumbles in the doorway, almost causing Vriska to collide with her back.

Corpses lay strewn across the deck, some left at their stations, none killed cleanly. Most have been given concave heads, while a few had the kindness of broken necks. Scouring her crew, Terezi notes only a handful of absence. The vast majority were at their posts, doing their jobs. 

She leans to the side and presses a fist to her mouth.

Vriska eyes her. “Didn’t take yours for a weak stomach, Pyrope,” she says.

“It’s not. I don’t object to killing; I object to waste.” Terezi gestures broadly to the array of corpses. Her lip curls. “This is an unprincipled insult to the craft. Look at that — that kind of blow wouldn’t even kill them immediately; they probably suffocated on their own blood. They’re miserable assassins, clowns.”

She notices the captain’s body speared over one of the control panels. She plucks his specibus, a taser, from his hand, and pockets it.

“We should go,” Vriska says. Yet she doesn’t try to move Terezi.

“Yes,” Terezi says. Once she’s finished observing the carnage, committing it to memory, she leaves with swift steps.

 

* * *

 

It’s easy to tell where the juggalo has been in her ship by the streaks of greasepaint and blood across the walls, the grime tread over the floors. A series of olive lettering spelling out the prophecy of the end of days on the door to Terezi’s quarters threatens her precariously held cool, but she tightens her grip on her sheath and presses on.

They go slowly, this time, creeping on the balls of their feet so as to avoid drawing their attention. Vriska makes several heated complaints about the jangling of her prongcuffs, to which Terezi replies with increasingly heated replies, culminating in the silent proffering of one obscene finger.

The sickbay is the only area of the ship unmarked by paint, but it’s populated by the scents of more than just the medicullers. A few of the crew have passed through here recently. How many remain alive, Terezi couldn’t say.

“Through here,” she tells Vriska, and taps in the entry code.

The medbay doors slide open, and she’s assailed by a brownblood with a spear, releasing a warlike yell as she lunges.

Terezi sighs, and lands two sharp jabs under the girl’s chin and abdominal plate. She collapses and scrambles to her feet, jaw agape in mortification.

Vriska snorts. “Nice going, Troll Kamikaze. You’re a credit to the Empire.”

“I’m sorry, Counselor,” the brownblood says, all haste and panic. “I didn’t mean — I thought you were —”

“A for initiative, F for execution. Don’t try that again.” Terezi pressed a switch and the doors shut behind them. “Glad to see someone’s alive, anyway.”

The sickbay is small, but it seems far larger than it should. A handful of trolls are sequestered in one corner, trying to build a blockade out of unused beds. Three are sprawled out, their various injuries bleeding profusely. The two medicullers kept onboard hover bedside, tending to them.

“Pardon,” the brownblood says, “but I don’t know your guest, Counselor.”

Vriska sticks out her tongue.

“Captain Vriska Serket,” Terezi says, pointing vaguely at her. “Captain, this is —” She waves to the brownblood expectantly. 

“Ahkmet, Counselor.” 

“This is Ahkmet. She does something. Ask her for the details.” Terezi takes stock. Six beds, eight trolls, not counting herself and the prisoner. All of them probably have their specibi; few of them know how to use it with much success against a subjugglator. Assorted medical supplies. A juggalo, rampaging her ship. 

She claps her hands. “Well,” she announces, “This is a shit situation.”

“Counselor, could I have a word?” Vriska rattles her prongcuffs vigorously. “Privately.”

Terezi purses her lips, but assents. They step into one of the supply closets, partitioned from the rest of the room only by a thin wood sheet. 

“All right,” Vriska says, steepling her fingers. “First off, I don’t suppose there’s any chance I could convince you to pop off these fuckers.”

“I don’t even have the key,” Terezi says tiredly. “It’s probably tucked away in one of Equius’ pockets, if you’d care to go loot the corpse.”

“Pleasant as it sounds, I’d rather not. I mean your sword. Legislacerators wear Calaman steel. These are plain titanium.” She pulls them taught with a snap. “Cuts through ‘em like they’re butter.”

Terezi inclines her head and stares her down over the tips of her glasses.

Vriska cringes. “Jesus, okay, fine. Put those peepers away before you hurt somebody.”

Terezi lifts her chin. “Did you have anything else to offer besides a fruitless plea for your freedom?”

“Sure. I had a plan —”

“Does it involve you being alone for any amount of time?”

“Yes.” 

“No.” 

Vriska sighs, mutters a complaint, makes to leave the closet. Terezi hesitates.

“You pulled me out of the way,” she says. 

Vriska leans against the wall, looking thoroughly disinterested. “Hmm?”

“In the docking bay.”

“Oh.” She shrugs. “Yeah, guess so.” 

“Probably saved my ass.” 

“I dunno. You seem decent with that sword, you probably could’ve handled him.”

“Maybe.” Terezi tilts her head. “Why?”

“Uh, because teal doesn’t go with my jacket. ‘Why didn’t you let me get my head bashed in?’ What kind of fucking question is that?” Vriska stares at the ceiling pointedly.

“It’s a question posed to a prisoner by her captive. If I died, you could take an escape pod and be in the next system over within minutes.”

Vriska chews her cheek. “The Bar’s not the only one in the galaxy with a warrant for my arrest,” she says sourly.

Terezi stills.

“The Church wants you,” she says. Her headache flares across the rest of her skull, agonizing and distracting. 

“Yeah. I might’ve killed a couple of their priests a sweep or two ago.” She shrugs apathetically. “I was trying to enjoy a day off and they were on some kind of crusade. Fuckers had it coming.”

“Indubitably, but — they’re here for _you_.”

“Maybe! I don’t know!” She flings up her hands. “Maybe they were passing by and your ex-kismesis figured he’d make an overture. He’s a juggalo! A barkbeast’s guess is as good as mine.” She fidgets with the cuff of her jacket. “Anyway, seeing as you’ve got orders to keep me alive, you’re my best option, for the time being. It’d probably be bad form to let you die.” She says it offhandedly, but her eyes dart erratically across the room. Seeking exits. Assessing possible enemies. There’s a modicum of calculus to everything she says, everything she does. Vriska Serket watches the world like it’s a gauntlet and she’s racing to the end.

“Bad form, indeed,” Terezi agrees.

“So. You’ve got eight trolls with all their bits in working order, one of whom can’t do shit because she’s cuffed at the wrists — not complaining, I’m just saying — and a juggalo making havoc anywhere and everywhere outside those doors.” Vriska folds her arms, with limited success, incapable of spreading her hands far enough to tuck them under her armpits. “Do you like your odds? Because I don’t like mine.”

Terezi catches her lip between her incisors and nibbles. At length, she claps her hands.

“Right,” she says brightly. “I’ve got an idea.”

 

* * *

 

The escape pods are painted in shades of green. Messy scrawls overlap each other so thoroughly that Terezi can’t read any of them. The overpowering scent of moss and dry grasses subsumes the rest of the corridor, swallowing the frost grey, engulfing the stench left in the subjugglator’s wake. It’s almost comforting, in some grotesque fashion. She doesn’t dwell on it.

Wood scrapes on steel. Loud breath echoes down the corridor; Vriska stiffens; Terezi forces herself to relax. 

“Hi, there, Gamzee,” she says, leaning against the wall.

Behind her, Vriska shudders. She taps on the glass of the escape pod, agitated. Terezi whacks the door with her cane, which shuts her up quickly.

Gamzee ambles around the corner. He’s almost even worse when he’s moving slowly. His body shuffles like something undead and unnatural, clothes sagging. Blood smears his arms, shirt, neck — _mouth —_ and even frosts the ends of his hair, plentiful evidence of his carnage. Terezi’s stomach flips once, not with fear, but with distaste.

“Hey, there,” he drawls, “little sister.”

“Finally remembered you,” she remarks. “Took me a while.”

He grins. His teeth are studded with amethysts. “You figure out who’s what n’ when in your memories, then?”

“More or less.” She adjusts her glasses. “I trust you haven’t come just to solicit my repugnance.”

“Nah. That ship’s come and flew, darlin’. COME AND FUCKIN’ FLEW.” He swings his club into the wall to punctuate his erratic rage, denting the steel. She swallows.

“So?”

“That there’s a motherfuckin’ fugitive of the church, is what she is.” He points his club at the escape pod. “Locked her up good and tight, all for me. Kind of you.”

“Why do you want her?”

“On account a’ killing some of my MOST MOTHERFUCKIN’ WICKED BROTHERS AND SISTERS, bitchsis. On account a’ slaying them like motherfuckin’ ANIMALS.” The club makes contact with a 27th century vase worth about three aureii. Terezi doesn’t wince, but it’s a near thing.

“Like motherfuckin’ animals,” she says. “I suppose you’re looking to kill her, then?”

“Not hardly yet. Gotta do things the RIGHT FUCKIN’ WAY. Bringin’ her to the high church people, what’ll pass judgment on her proper. Gotta bring the spiderbitch to motherfuckin’ JUSTICE.” He leers. “You like that deal, right, most uppity of heretical sisters?”

She ignores him. “You did a considerable amount of damage to my ship. I should like compensation for it.”

His expression darkens. “Damage ain’t the word for it,” he says. “Your walls have been blessed with the most righteous of prophecies, nooksniffer, DAMAGE AIN’T THE MOTHERFUCKIN’ WORD.”

“I was talking about my crew, you insufferable grape-breathed oaf,” she says cheerfully. “They didn’t do anything to you.”

“Didn’t do no harm to the world, them bein’ gone in it. They was all damned heretical anyways. You know the way.”

Terezi grimaces. “Yes, but you see, it leaves me in a bind, as I rather needed them to move the ship.”

“Doesn’t sound like a problem of mine.”

“It’s a problem of yours because _I’m_ a problem of yours. In that I’m the only thing standing between you and your quarry. And, however amiable I was to negotiation prior to the wholesale slaughter of my employees, that flexibility has been eradicated.” She draws her sword. “You are — and I say this with utmost respect for your pious authority — under arrest for crimes against the Alternian Empire and her agents. You have the right to notify your moirail of your impending demise.” 

He hoots. “You’re a RIOT. I up and forgot how fuckin’ fun you are, lawbug.” He leans over her. “I’ll be needin’ entry to that pod, anyhow, though.”

Vriska presses herself further against the wall, apprehension wafting off her in thick, poignant waves of scent.

Terezi meets his grin measure for measure. “Sure,” she says, and presses her thumb to the print reader.

The door slides in and he shoves her out of the way. She allows herself to be moved. Vriska yelps as he reaches for her neck and ducks out of the way, racing around to the other side of the pod. Terezi takes a breath, raises her sword, and plunges into the fray.

Gamzee isn’t expecting an attack from behind him. Her sword cuts a deep gash down his vertebral column before he realizes she’s in the pod, and by then she’s leaping up on the seats to get the higher ground. He’s tall enough that it really only puts her at eye level with him, but it’s nonetheless useful. She has her sword at his neck before he has time to pull back his club, which freezes him effectively.

“I reiterate,” she says, very sweetly, “that you are under arrest for crimes against the Alternian Empire and her agents.”

A laugh leaks out of his throat hoarsely. “Damn, little bitchsister. You’ve got globes.”

“Has it been so long that you’ve forgotten?” Terezi lays a thoughtful finger on her mouth. “Well. No matter.”

He moves first, to her great chagrin. A kick to her kneecaps dislodges her and her sword, which he bats away with ease. She swipes at his shins as she falls, slashing open his trousers with long vertical wounds. His foot swings around and catches her in the abdomen, and she rolls, springing to her feet near the door to the pod.

“I don’t GET you, MOST VILE OF ICONOCLASTS,” he says. “You’re wastin’ your time with THIS MOTHERFUCKIN’ CRIMINAL when you could be SITTIN’ PRETTY.” His tone fluxes soft, entreating. “You know I won’t kill you if n’ I don’t have to.” 

Terezi shakes her head. “You can’t possibly think I’m that stupid.”

“Never could kill an ex, you know? Bad juju, killin’ someone what’s had your bloodpusher goin’, even sweeps ago.”

Vriska gags. Terezi is tempted to do the same.

“Luckily,” she says, attempting to remain bright, “that is a reservation I do not share.” She makes a go for his head, admittedly an ill-theorized one. He pinches the blade before it strikes his jugular, where it shreds the skin of his fingers. 

“Still, then,” he says, ever contemplative, “why? Not that it’ll make much difference, when you’re dead as a motherfucker, but it gets the pan goin’.”

She wrenches her sword free, sluicing purple viscera over the floor of the pod’s cabin. “The function of justice is not to service oneself,” she quips, “but to serve.”

“Huh.” He cocks his head to one side, horn gouging the ceiling. “Well, that makes all of none sense.” 

“I doubt it would, to you.”

Resigned, he bares his club. Terezi lifts her sword, knowing despite it that the steel will do little against the brunt of his efforts.

A cacophonous _crunch_ splits the air, and a seat shatters over Gamzee’s head. He falls like a sack of tubers, head striking the floor first, the seat’s remains scattering. Vriska plants a foot on his back, a shard of plastic clenched in one triumphant fist. She must have ripped it off the pod’s foundation. 

Her eyes are wild and her breathing fast, face folded in gruesome glee. She hocks a glob of spit onto his head, which ends up in his hair.

“Charming,” Terezi remarks.

She glances up furtively, as if only just noticing Terezi’s presence. Coughing, she drops the shard and backs off his body, sliding her fist across the keypad, entering a random set of area coordinates. “Whatever. I’m shooting him in the direction of the nearest neutron star and hoping that he doesn’t wake up before he gets there.”

Terezi opens the doors to the pod and they dart through, shutting them behind Vriska. She pushes the button marked ‘JETTISON’ and the pod shoots out into the vacuum of space, offering the airlock window with a view of its rear as it leaves. It soars just over the surface of Tethys and is slingshot off to the left by the planet’s gravity.

“Well done,” Terezi says. “Not many could get the jump on a juggalo.” 

“Not many could distract one long enough to let anyone. That was some nice swordplay, there, Counselor.” 

Vriska jostles her. Terezi catches her shoulder before it can make contact and shoves it away. 

“You don’t need to be touching me.”

“Yeah. Figured.” Vriska seems unbothered by the reprimand. She taps the glass. “So, how’d you and the clown . . .”

“Again, I’m baffled that you expect an answer.”

“Unless you set me straight, I’m gonna think all _kinds_ of things, so you might as well tell me,” Vriska entreats. “Not like there’s any harm. I already know the worst of it. Pailing a juggalo, that’s as low as it gets, innit? Can’t imagine doing worse.”

“You could pail the Admiral,” Terezi suggests, and a hot flush rises up Vriska’s neck.

“That’s different.”

“Is it.”

“That has _nothing_ to do with — first off, it was hardly ‘pailing’ — second off, how’d you —”

“Half of the information in your file comes from Eridan Ampora’s deposition. Did you think breaking up with a highblood would be pretty?” Terezi smirks. “The detail was obscene. It was restricted reading for second-term students and above at the Academy.”

Vriska gags. “That piece of shit,” she hisses. “I’ll tear his goddamn tongue out.”

“Looks like someone’s still holding a torch.” 

“This is entirely platonic disgust, get your mind out of the gutter. Anyway, like you’re one to talk.”

Terezi clucks her tongue. “I was young, he was vile, we were stupid. It was prior to my acceptance in the Bar. But as for you — _you_ had the Admiral in spades until eleven sweeps.”

“He’s a hard guy to break up with! Every time he figures you’re going to do it, he makes up an excuse and flies to the other side of the galaxy, colonizes a new planet.” Vriska sulks. “I’d wanted to end it since we were nine.” 

“Nine?” Terezi turns her head. “You grew up with him?”

“Well, yeah. We were FLARP rivals.” She tilts her head, curious. “He didn’t put that in the deposition?”

“No.” Terezi doesn’t know why she’s so surprised; it would make sense that Vriska and Eridan had known each other for a while.

“I suppose he thought it wasn’t relevant,” she adds, after a moment.

“Or he didn’t want his dumb FLARPsona becoming the subject of public scrutiny.” Vriska sniggers. 

“That, either.”

 

* * *

 

The crew returns to the bridge and begins cleaning up the bodies, but their ineptitude becomes increasingly apparent as they fail to meet even the lowest standards of corpse disposal. Terezi almost steps in on a number of occasions, only belatedly reminding herself that the job is below her station. When finished with cleanup, the remains of her crew meander across the bridge, disheartened and slow in bloodstained uniforms, nursing wounds.

Judging by Vriska’s grimace, the chances of _Pyrexia_ making it anywhere safely are a Sufferite’s odds at a Mirthful Mass.

“So,” Terezi says. “Certain death by clown is replaced by certain death by space.”

Vriska wipes her face clear of dismay. “What? No. No, this is fine.” She rubs her hand over the main dashboard, scrubbing at a smear of purple blood. “I’ve flown ships on less. I’ve flown ships single-handed, actually. Don’t know what I’ll do with this many trolls in the bridge at once. It’ll fell crowded, probably.”

Ahkmet rises from where she attends to one of the others. “We’ve lost our communications officer,” she explains apologetically. “And our first mate. All the motortrolls are down, both gunners, and the shield operator.”

“Not an issue.” Vriska points to a few stations. “We only really need those three seats filled, and I see more than three trolls on their feet. Problem solved.” She snaps her fingers. “Next question.”

Ahkmet gives Terezi an uncertain glance, but continues at Terezi’s nod. “The primary power generator was destabilized by repeated blows to the docking bay. The auxiliary generators are in effect, but aren’t producing at the rate we need to travel interstellar.”

Vriska ticks points off her fingers as she speaks. “Deactivate the aft cannons and redirect their power couplers to the auxiliaries; shut down power supply to the unused cabins and kitchen area, or anywhere that we’re not using. Lower shields to fifty percent and redirect those, too. Should have enough for a short route, then.”

Ahkmet scribbles down the directions on her databook, and then, still shooting looks between Vriska and Terezi, says, “We still have the matter of destination.”

“Right.” Vriska taps the databook. “Negative three thousand thirty-seven, negative eight thousand eight hundred twenty-two, positive five hundred thousand one hundred ninety-four. Should bring up a port by the name of _New Bellona_.”

Ahkmet begins to write; Terezi holds up a finger.

“Last I checked, that wasn’t your call,” she says.

Vriska lays a hand on Ahkmet’s shoulder. “Give us a moment,” she says sweetly, shoving the girl off in the direction of the communications chair.

She turns to Terezi and squares her shoulders. “Last I checked, you didn’t know how to fly a ship.”

“Regardless of my talents in the area of astrophysics, you are still a prisoner of the Alternian Empire.”

She curls her lip. “And you don’t have a fucking captain, so I guess you’ll have to make do, eh? Do you know any other ports within fifty leagues selling engine fuel that won’t poison your goddamn ship when you fill it?”

“You aren’t really in a position to negotiate,” Terezi says flatly. “You’re wearing prongcuffs, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Neither are you. Your captain’s dead, if you haven’t noticed.” Vriska smiles unpleasantly. “Which leaves us deadlocked, unless we can come to some kind of . . . compromise.”

“I don’t strike deals with criminals.”

“Pity. Maybe you’ll feel better about bargaining with the Handmaid, owing to the fact that you’ll be _meeting_ her soon.” 

“Are you threatening me?”

“I’m explaining the circumstances. The ship’ll flounder into a black hole if someone doesn’t grab her by the horns, soon.” Vriska points to herself. “That’s me, namely. Seeing as I don’t believe those hands of yours ever touched a ship’s dash in your life.”

“You’re wrong on a number of counts.” Terezi hesitates, still. “What do you get out of helping us?”

Vriska rests on her heels, speculative. “You’ve tied my hands here, Pyrope. Still in my best interests to keep _you_ alive, you’re my ticket off the hangtroll’s rope, so there’s that. I _could_ kill you and fly the ship myself, but then I’d have to kill your crew, too, which wouldn’t be all that hard, except then I’d be understaffed. If I go back and sit in my cell like a good little captive, we all fly headfirst into the first thing that crosses our path. And how about your options? None of them look all that scintillating. Kill me, break whatever agreement you’ve got with my new friend the Magistragedy; lock me up, see above.” She nudges the captain’s chair with the toe of her boot. “So.” 

Ahkmet pipes up from her station at communications. “I’ve found New Bellona,” she says, distinctly uncomfortable. “Counselor. It’s close. Probably our best bet for port.”

Vriska smirks. It grates on Terezi’s nerves. This is breathtakingly illegal. The Magistragedy would have a coronary if she saw an agent of the Bar striking deals with street criminals and wanted women; the disgrace of necessity rakes its claws over Terezi’s pan, smug. Victorious.

“You pilot the ship to New Bellona,” Terezi tells her. “Nothing more. Your authority begins and ends in this block.”

“Sounds fine.”

“Blink wrong, and I’ll decide that it’s a better use of my time to just deal with the consequences of disappointing the Magistragedy.” 

“Sounds dandy.”

“Take us anywhere but where you’ve said you will, and the same threat applies.”

“Straightforward. I like it.”

Terezi inspects Vriska’s scent for deceit. Finding none, she turns to address Ahkmet.

A piercing sensation erupts in her left temple, a hot point of pressure on her cerebral cortex. Unlike her headache earlier, it forcefully distracts her, as if someone’s trying to stick a finger in her thinkpan and stir around the thoughts there. It’s a graceless attack, and a short one.

Terezi, without looking, grabs a fistful of Vriska’s hair and slams her face into the dashboard.

“Fuck!” Vriska stumbles back, clutching her nose, which is dribbling blood over her lip. Her glasses seem to be intact, which is a relief; glass in the eye is a nasty present. Terezi, having delivered it on more than one occasion, knows well its severity.

“Never try that again,” she says, dispassionately.

“Jesus. It wasn’t like I was going to hurt you or anything, I’m not a fucking idiot —”

“It was my mistake. Another rule: keep your telepathic prongs to yourself. Incidentally, my autonomy is something I hold very dear.” 

Vriska huffed, dabbing the last of the blood away. “Didn’t have to break my fucking nose to tell me that.” 

“Nothing breaks a telepath’s concentration quite like a good old knock on the noggin,” Terezi remarks brightly. “Take it in good spirits, Captain Serket. I could’ve landed one much harder.”

“Yeah,” Vriska mutters, “except you’d have had to pilot yourself to New Bellona running on a skeleton crew, on account of having bludgeoned the one person who knows how to run a ship. You need me to keep your broken-ass ship in one piece until we make port.”

Terezi pauses, considers, and nods in silent agreement.

“And to do that, I need both hands.” 

Terezi sets her jaw. “No.”

“What can I do? And I’m not gonna kill the people I need to make port. Don’t strain your crew’s capacity because of your neurosis.” Vriska bares her wrists, holding the chain wide and taut. She blinks innocently. “But it’s your call, Counselor.”

Terezi’s sword snaps the chain in half effortlessly; Vriska was right about Calaman steel. 

“Abuse the privilege,” Terezi warns, sheathing the blade, “or so much as hint that you may be _thinking_ of doing so —”

“I’ll suggest nothing,” Vriska swears, rubbing her wrists with glee. “God, but those things stung.”

“For good reason. I hold you personally responsible for the damage anyone alive on this ship incurs on the journey.”

“That’s not fair!”

“No, it’s not. What gave you the impression that I would be?”

Vriska twists her mouth unpleasantly but nods, all the same. 

“Excellent.” Terezi swivels around the captain’s chair, nudging the dead blueblood out of the seat, and holds out a hand. “To your station, then, Captain.”

Vriska gave her a long, guarded look, her hands falling from her wrists. Her foot beats erratically against the tile, kinetic energy virtually overflowing from her person, a temptation to flee apparent. Terezi forces herself to hold still. Fair bargains demand a modicum of freedom on behalf of both participants.

She sits in the chair. “Ahkmet,” she orders. “Set coordinates.”

Terezi’s hands don’t leave the back of the chair — a reminder, a warning. But Vriska seems unperturbed. She barks orders naturally, ease seeping back into the fluid motions of her hands skittering over the dashboard, like a musician on a favored instrument. Vriska’s most comfortable when she’s behind the wheel, nowhere else. Terezi makes note of it.

“Yes, Captain,” Ahkmet says, her discomfort with the term clear.

“Open the thrusters.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Accelerate with all due speed. That is to say, as fast as fucking possible.” 

“Yes, Captain.” 

The _Pyrexia_ groans as the generators splutter to life, and then her engines shriek; with a violent wrench, she leaps into flight, distancing herself between Tethys. The _Lady Sapphire_ and the _Godspeed_ are shaken from the docking port, and careen off by themselves, crumpling silently. The red light of Sol-124 skitters across the ship’s gleaming hull, and then shrinks to but a faint glint on the ship’s stern.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Delicate in every way but one (the swordplay)_  
>  _God knows we like archaic kinds of fun (the old way)_  
>  _Chance is the only game I play with, baby_  
>  _We let our battles choose us_  
>  —Troll Lorde, _Glory and Gore_


	3. The Mother of Invention

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“It is said that there is honor among thieves. While one would be hard-pressed to ascribe honor to a gamblignant, there did exist rules and customs in place to maintain order within pirate society. Bearing striking resemblance to the rules of nineteenth-century human pirate associations, the Mindfang Codes were a set of rules used by gamblignants to govern distribution of stolen goods, interpersonal quarrels, and romantic entanglements (see Appendix A). After the Marquise’s untimely demise, the more nuanced and inconvenient sections of the Codes fell into disuse by contemporary crews, particularly those more concerned with productivity than civility. Still, even without one to enforce them, the rules she set in place defined the practices of most interstellar pirates in spirit, if not in letter.”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

It takes four hours to reach New Bellona. 

The planet itself, to Terezi’s knowledge — which, admittedly, falls short of par — is nothing remarkable. A city-world, about a third the size of Alternia with half the population, characterized by frequent storms, and the only interstellar spaceport in the Nar System. 

Upon approach, the fumes radiating from the planet are strong enough to knock a hoofbeast on its back. Smokestacks erupt from the ground, each resembling a thin volcano, gushing smog from every open orifice; the streets are paved with rough concrete and uneven brick, over which speedlifts dart back and forth. The world glitters like a monochrome painting under the distant light of Sol-124, wreathed in clouds so dense with pollution they near opaque black; what area is not plastered with stone and steel is swallowed by a writhing grey ocean, over which typhoons cluster, murky zits on the planet’s face.

“Approaching New Bellona,” Vriska says, with no small degree of satisfaction. “Prepare for landing.”

Terezi braces herself as they sink through the cloud cover. The communications center beeps, a series of unintelligible codes scrolling across the display. 

“What’s that?” 

Vriska ignores her. “Ahkmet,” she says. “Get that.”

“Captain —”

“They know my voice. Won’t let us land if they think it’s a stolen ship, the bloody hypocrites. You do it.”

Ahkmet pales, but she leans over and presses a button on the center nonetheless. “This is the _S.S. Pyrexia,”_ she says, her voice remarkably even. “Seeking permission to make port. Over.” 

“State your purpose. Over.” The Alternian is harsh, garbled, and a dialect that Terezi scarcely remembers from her Foreign Language classes at the Academy. Ahkmet seems to get the gist of it, though.

“Refueling and minor repairs.” She glances at Vriska for confirmation, who rolls her hand in a _go-on_ gesture. “Temporary visitation only. Over.”

A pause; the scratch of radio static engulfs the cabin.

“Continue to Landing Bay Four, over,” the troll orders, and Ahkmet sags with relief.

“Landing Bay Four, confirmed. Over and out.” She flicks off the communications center and slides back into her seat, legs trembling.

“Nice work,” Vriska says, and pulls a lever. The ship descends with new speed, angling toward a group of tall, broad buildings clustered close to an oceanic bay. Terezi tightens her grip on her chair.

The _Pyrexia_ ’s landing equipment extends with three-pronged fingers, settling delicately atop the first level of the landing bay. The _thump_ of touchdown jolts Terezi off Vriska’s seat and she grounds herself using her cane. The bay itself is little more than a concrete platform with the number ‘4’ marked on it with red paint, but upon meeting the ship’s landing gear, the platform begins sinking, bringing them down to ground level. Gingerly, Vriska edges the ship forward, taxying into the shipyard and parking her in between a black cargo ship and a grey passenger carrier. The russet color of _Pyrexia’s_ hull sticks out like a sore horn amongst the nondescript vessels of New Bellona’s inhabitants, but there’s nothing to be done about that.

Vriska slumps back from the dashboard, pushing a clump of sweat-sticky hair from her eyes. “Welcome to Port Imperial, ladies,” she announces, a bit weakly.

“Port Imperial?” Terezi scrunches her nose. “This is a scumhive, Serket.”

“Yeah, well. You’ll get parts for repair here, cheaper than anywhere else.” Vriska cranes her neck to look Terezi in the eye. “You really wanna argue about where we’re going after we’re there?”

“First thing to know about me,” Terezi tells her, brightly. “I will argue about anything, at _any_ point in time.” Nevertheless, she drops the subject. “Where are we going to get parts? I’m not inclined to stay here any longer than necessary.” 

Vriska plants a hand on the back of her chair and hauls herself to her feet. “Got a few friends here that I haven’t screwed over yet,” she says. “We can pawn what we can’t buy off of them, although frankly, place like this? There isn’t much we can’t buy.”

Terezi puts up a hand and halts her from marching past. “A moment,” she says. “Let’s get our priorities in order before we go swaggering citywards, shall we?” She turns her head to speak to Ahkmet, keeping her hand in place. “What do we need?”

Ahkmet leans over the dash and scans her databook, consternation drawing a line between her brows. “The whole docking bay will need replacement or fusing over,” she says, her tone illogically apologetic. “Apart from that — uh, patches to the hull near the dock, as well as rewiring for damaged circuitry nearby it; a replacement escape pod, although that’s not _strictly_ necessary, just Imperial procedure; and we need power cells for the primary generators would go a long ways, seeing as we can’t power the shields at over fifty percent, or use aft cannons at all, in the current state. Medical supplies, for Imorej’s arm and Tantal’s leg. And a crew.” She scrolls down the databook, grimaces at the figures. “That last one rather urgently, I’m afraid. The repairs will take months with just what we’ve got on hand.”

Vriska’s eyes lift to the ceiling as she mutters calculations under her breath. She nods. “Doable.”

Terezi lowers her hand. “How long will the repairs take with a full crew?”

Ahkmet tilts her head from side to side, uncertain. “Depends on the size of the crew. Imperial standard size or minimum operating capacity?”

Terezi pushes up her glasses to rub at the corner of her eyes. Unmerciful Troll God, but it feels like she hasn’t slept in a sweep. “Let’s say I get you fifteen adult trolls, plus your current crew, me, and the good captain here. What can you do with that many?”

Her calculations are swift. “Two weeks,” she says, punching a number into her databook. “That’s the fastest it can be done safely.”

“Lovely. I’ll get back to you with fifteen trolls, then.” Terezi catches Vriska by the shoulder. Quieter, she murmurs, “I assume you know a place where we can get fifteen trolls.”

Vriska sighs. “I could get you a hundred trolls by sunrise, Counselor. For every lousy rustbucket in the sky, there’s a dozen little shits itching to catch a ride offworld.” 

“I commend your entrepreneurial nature. Let me refine, then, the order: I assume you know a place where we can get fifteen _reputable_ trolls.”

“Aw, hell, Pyrope, you can’t tie a hoofbeast’s nubs and expect it to walk straight —”

“I can, however, tie yours!” She rubs Vriska’s shoulders with mocking encouragement. “Those weren’t the only pair of prongcuffs onboard, my dear Captain. Can you or can you not get me what I need?”

“Of course I can. Don’t be ridiculous.” Vriska shakes her hand off. “It’ll just a little more digging, that’s all.”

“Well, then.” Terezi nods to Ahkmet. “Watch the ship. We’re taking a landing party ashore.” 

“Counselor?” Ahkmet appears downright alarmed at the tall order. “I don’t think I’m authorized —”

“Really? Seemed to me that you just got authorized,” Terezi says, and clamps a hand over Vriska’s elbow. “We’ll be back by morning. Don’t sweat it.” 

Ahkmet nods in silence, clutching her databook. Satisfied, Terezi marches Vriska Serket off the ship with one pointy elbow clutched in hand.

 

* * *

 

She did Port Imperial an injustice, really, to call it a ‘scumhive.’

It was more than a scumhive. It was the scumhive which all scumhives aspired to be. It was the scumhive for which the term ‘scumhive’ was invented, the prototypical example of wretchedness and desperation; if one were to look up ‘scumhive’ in the dictionary, one would find adjacent a glossy snapshot of Port Imperial, resplendent in its filth.

Stepping off the ship, the reek redoubles. Smoke and sweat, salty flesh _,_ rust, the wet scent of humid heat, shit, piss, bad liquor, good liquor, mediocre sex, perfumes from planets on the other side of the galaxy that do nothing to mask the odor but sculpt it into something more cloying and somehow more disgusting, blood. Steel. Dark water. The smell of Vriska Serket, newly removed from the ship’s sterile interior, which is unique even to Terezi’s highly trained nostrils; she smells of space, of spaceship fuel and durasteel. Of white stars. Of the Alternian sea.

Off the _Pyrexia’s_ self-contained gravity field, Terezi’s weight diminishes significantly. Owing to New Bellona’s size, gravity seems more a mild inconvenience than a serious facet of physics, which Terezi both enjoys and laments in equal measure. It necessitates concentrating more to move.

Vriska takes it all in stride. “Southways is the best place for finding those fit to sail,” she says, steering them to the left of the shipyard. Terezi hardly knows north from up in this place, so she begrudgingly lets Vriska play navigator. “Industrial district’s at the west edge of the city, but we won’t need that until we’ve got the people to haul stuff over. Gotta make a stop in the Industrial District, first, though.”

“Why?”

“Got a stop to make,” Vriska reiterates, infuriatingly neutral, and then, at Terezi’s scrutiny, “Oh, pull that rod out of your nook, I’m not going to split on you.” She shudders. “Not while the Church still has a warrant out for me. At least you’ve got principles.”

“You managed to evade the law for this long.” Terezi moves around a gaggle of chittering yellowbloods, struggling to keep ahold of her captive. “What’s to say you won’t take your chances again?”

“Good fucking sense? Have a little faith, Counselor. I couldn’t make it half a mile without you descending like an agent of divine fucking retribution on my sorry ass. I’m not inclined to give you an excuse to whip out your bul— pardon me, _sword.”_

“With that kind of good sense, Captain, it’s a wonder you got arrested at all.” They turn down a side street, and the trolls cleave in two to make way for them. Several actually jump a fence to carry themselves outside Terezi’s field of perception. “Is the local wildlife always this skittish?”

Vriska makes a choked noise in her throat. “Why, I don’t know. Couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you’re wearing a legislacerator’s uniform in a city where nobody’s paid taxes since before you were alive.” 

“Color me intrigued. That’s two, three, four million counts of tax evasion? The Bar would have a field day.”

“The Bar would have an accounting nightmare. _You_ try arresting a planet, tell me how it goes.”

There’s another shipyard at the end of the street, holding a distinct caliber of vessel from the kind found in Landing Bay Four. The vast majority are dilapidated, vomiting scrap metal onto the ground, like some kind of pretentious artistic statement on the nature of life and decay. Others have clearly been raided for what few useful parts they might have possessed. Those that have retained all their pieces in working order are those not worth scavenging, models over a century old, classes that haven’t served in the fleet since the Condesce was crowned. 

“Seriously, though,” Vriska says, sidling through a troll-sized hole in the chain-link fence. “Wouldn’t hurt our chances of staying undercover for you to put on something a little more inconspicuous. Like an orange smock, for example.”

“If you’re offering me the shirt off your back, keep it.”

“No. We’re not quite there yet, I’m afraid.” Vriska has the globes to throw a wink over her shoulder. “I’ve got a few things stashed away, though.” 

She winds a narrow path through the trash heaps and fallen ships, taking them far out of view of the passing street. Terezi keeps a hand on the hilt of her sword; the place practically shrieks _probable cause._

Turning around one enormous mountain of trash, they encounter a mostly-intact Corvette, a moderately old ship with two triangular wings, bent to brush the ground in its landing mode. It rests on eight spindly prongs, with a row of beady red viewing panels sewn into the cockpit, and a round body about half the size of _Pyrexia._ It’s been painted cerulean, although the paint has chipped away in places, revealing the black steel underneath. Remarkably good condition, for a Corvette; if Terezi’s memory serves (and it almost invariably does), they went out of production sweeps ago.

“This,” Vriska says proudly, “is the _Vagrant_.” 

Terezi tightens her grip. “You’re pulling my nub,” she says.

The _Vagrant’s_ name carried weight, especially in the fleet. It summoned groans from most pilots, appreciative nods from what legislacerators were in attendance, a muttered curse from any eavesdropping ruffiannihilators. Vriska Serket’s ship, renowned for escaping capture more times than statistical probability deemed possible, was as much an icon as its captain.

“It’s a rust bucket,” she continues, incredulous.

“Shut your fucking windgaper,” Vriska says, offended. “I won’t have your heresy near my ship.” 

“I’m not demeaning her. I’m stating the facts. _This_ outran an Imperial squadron?”

“Three times,” Vriska boasts. “C’mon. I need to pick up some things.”

“What ‘things’?” Terezi looks around. “And how hasn’t she been scalped for all she’s worth?”

“A coin in the right pocket will get you an Empire, Counselor, and if you haven’t learned that yet, it’s a miracle you’re still alive.” Vriska plunges a hand into one of her overcoat’s innumerable pockets and pulls out a key fob. Pressing one of the buttons lowers the _Vagrant’s_ boarding ramp, an ill-supported set of metal stairs which could be considered a legitimate murder weapon.

“The former question was the more relevant of the two, and I’d very much prefer you answer it.” 

Vriska grinds her teeth and faces Terezi, a movement made awkward by the latter’s grip on her arm. “Look,” she insists. “This is a city of thieves and killers and _criminals._ It’s not a fucking courtblock. The residents of this shithole will skin us and use our horns for toothpicks if we let them, I’m not keen on walking around unarmed.”

“I’m not keen on my captive keeping a weapon,” Terezi counters. “What’s your specibus?”

“Dicekind, with a pistol or two to grease the wheels here and there. Nothing I could pull on you without you noticing, Counselor, don’t get your bulgegarments in a twist.” She tries to pull away. “And we’ll be needing a change of clothes for you, as well, because you’re a dead troll walking in teal.” 

Terezi uses Vriska as a second walking aid in her attempt to climb the stairs, in conjunction with liberal application of her cane. “Your ship is a death trap,” she announces. “The instant I am within range of a husktop and an Internet connection, I am declaring it an official threat to the safety and mental health of the Alternian Empire.”

“Old news, babe. This clunker earned that classification sweeps ago.” Vriska pats the hull lovingly as they clamber inside. 

“Unsurprising.” 

Vriska reaches for a small, rickety ladder on the side of the wall. Terezi notes, a moment too late, that there are no stairs leading up to the main cabin.

“No.”

“You think I’m gonna try and escape on my government identified ship, by myself, with you still _on_ it?”

Terezi assesses the ladder again, critical.

“You have five minutes,” she says. “If you go over that, I’m coming up, and God help you.”

“Death threats are getting old, Counselor,” Vriska calls, already halfway up the ladder. “Try something fresh, next time.”

Terezi sets the tip of her cane on the ground with more force than is strictly necessary, and waits.

Four minutes pass like a sharp-beaked featherbeast in flight. The fifth leaks by, agonizing, as if the seconds are grains in an hourglass and the channel between upper vault and bottom is narrowing. There’s four seconds left to the time limit when Vriska’s head appears at the top of the ladder, clutching a knife between her teeth, and gives a muffled yell of arrival.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Terezi says, blasé. “It would have been an awful inconvenience to kill you.”

“Beh ih ood,” Vriska grunts, and scrambles down the ladder. She’s clutching a bundle of black cloth under one arm, and a gun holster swings from the other, which she uses to clamber to Terezi’s level one-handed, nimble and swift. She drops the last six feet to the floor, shrugging off the holster and spitting the dagger at her feet.

Terezi lifts an eyebrow, which she considers a measured and rational response, given the circumstances. “Are you preparing for an armed invasion?”

“I’m preparing for my own luck, Pyrope, which has been running cold lately. You should consider doing the same.” She shirks her jacket and tosses it to Terezi, apparently without thinking; Terezi lets it drop to the ground. 

Four guns fit into the ribbed slots of the holster, which Vriska wrestles over her shoulders with many a muffled complaint. The knife goes down the edge of her boot, two more switchblades into hidden compartments in her shirt cuffs, and she winds a length of chain around one wrist, one side of which is rough and serrated — a steel file, woven into a bracelet. 

She picks up her coat and puts it back on, adjusting the collar with a fastidious care that surprises Terezi. Shaking the black cloth, it unravels into a long, high-necked cloak, which she holds out. “For you,” she says. “Compliments of the Captain.” Her smirk oozes mockery, and it’s not immediately clear why.

Terezi slings the cloak over her shoulders, gives it a quick sniff. It doesn’t smell of Vriska, but of someone older and with far more experience in the carnal ways of trollkind. Emerald, by the scent of it, but it’s hard to tell over the scents of other colors, multifarious and diverse, which form a patchwork quilt of ignominious rank.

“Gross,” she tells Vriska.

“Sorry. It was all I had on hand.”

“I can smell deceit,” Terezi says irritably, “you don’t need to bother. If you’re giving me some two-caegar piece of ass’ cloak, do me a favor and be honest about it.”

“All right.” Vriska leans in and whispers in her ear. “I’m giving you some two-caegar piece of ass’ cloak.”

Terezi makes a grab for her horn, but Vriska ducks out of the way, laughing. She trots down the loading ramp, forcing Terezi to follow with tedious, careful steps. Vriska taps the key fob again, and the ramp curls back up into the ship. 

“So,” Terezi says. “How’d you end up on the _Sapphire_?”

Vriska slows her stride, allows Terezi to catch up. Terezi considers reestablishing her hold on Vriska’s elbow, but decides that it would draw too much attention; they already make a distinctive silhouette, and Vriska doesn’t seem inclined to run anyways. 

“Zahhak really didn’t tell you anything about how he nabbed me, did he?”

“He was woefully short on detail in the initial recount. Unfortunately, his spinal cord and his cerebral cortex had a violent divorce as of late, and he failed to follow up on his promise of elaboration.” 

Vriska chuckles. “That’s dark shit to say, ’specially when the man’s death night is young.”

“It was rather mild, actually, for my profession.”

“Jesus. What’s _dark_ humor, for you legal types?”

“Pantomime,” Terezi says brightly, and Vriska shudders.

“ _Jesus.”_

“Anyway — the Colonel’s regrettable but self-incurred demise being shelved for the time being — _ha!_ — the story of your incarceration arouses my curiosity.”

They leave the shipyard and begin heading south. Unlike before, the crowds no longer part for them, and the sidewalk becomes an exercise in restraint. Terezi bears witness to seven illegal activities before they’ve finished a block. The crowd’s density increases as they leave the industrial district, enough that she has to weed a path for herself with her cane by whacking the shins of approaching trolls.

“Well,” Vriska says, relishing the word. “I didn’t go easy, I’ll tell you that.”

“I would be distraught if you had.”

“Ha! No. We were docked in the shipyard, anyway, and my crew was out. Shouldn’t have let them go so early in the day, but New Bellona’s tidally locked, see? Always seems like a fine time for drinks and pails, to a bunch of grist-thirsty skyfarers. So they’re away, bars and pubs and everywhere, and this _huge_ ruffiannihilator ship comes tearing out of the sky — I figure that there’s a government raid going on or something, nothing to worry my pan over. ’Cept it keeps getting closer to _me.”_ Vriska hovers her hand over Terezi’s shoulder, careful not to touch. “Turn left here.

“So I warm up _Vagrant’s_ cannons, and she starts singing pretty, I get ready to blow _Sapphire_ out of the sky. But then the Colonel himself comes barging down the gangplank, busting out his spiel: ‘We have you surrounded,’ and, ‘If you go quietly, we won’t kill your crew.’ Course, I don’t have a squealer’s oath that he’ll keep that promise. But he had me by port and starboard, and I couldn’t take on fifty ruffiannihilators by my lonesome — so I say, ‘I’ll take that deal,’ and I shut down my cannons. I’m careful, though — it’s _me_ he wants, not my ship, so I leave everything I’ve got what could incriminate me or that I wouldn’t fancy stolen onboard. Thought I’d be back aboard in a jiffy, after I broke out of their cellblock.” She shrugs. “Didn’t expect they’d take me straight to a legislacerator; reasoned that they’d just bring me right to the execution block, weapons ready, and make my job easy. It’s always easy to break out when you’re surrounded by armed idiots.”

“A decent plan,” Terezi says. “If lacking in a few details.”

“Planning for details is just asking for the universe to throw you a curveball, Pyrope. Fortune deals in the general.” She turns onto a side street. “Hold on, I want to use the loadgaper.”

“What, _now?”_

“Sure, now.” She points to a row of portable loadgapers lined up beside the fence, lifts an eyebrow. “Is that satisfactory to you, Counselor? May I have your esteemed permission to dispense fecal matter?”

Terezi rolls her eyes. “Make it quick.”

Vriska trots off towards the loadgapers and makes a show of selecting one, casting Terezi exaggerated glances and using dramatic, silly hand movements to demonstrate her lack of insidious intent. Terezi exhales shortly. 

“Just choose a damn flusher,” she yells, and Vriska snickers, slips inside the nearest loadgaper.

Terezi shakes her head and turns her attention back to the open street.

Port Imperial isn’t as bad as it seemed at first glance, although it’s entirely possible that’s just sensory habituation talking. People still give her a decent berth, especially if she looks them in the eye, and it’s got an atmosphere to it. She’s been in worse places.

Of course, with the places Terezi Pyrope’s been, she could _always_ say she’d been in worse places.

She remembers her first time offworld after being accepted to the Academy. It was an assessment trip for the half-sweep marking period, the destination being a shitty little moon in the Laetit System. At that point, she’d only ever killed trolls in FLARP; legislacerator training had heretofore only involved drawing blood from the other trainees.

The moon was a barren place. They took the trainees to a scouting outpost in the middle of a desert, where a recent uprising had been reported among the lowbloods. Antihemocaste rhetoric, the professors had said. Assign and implement the appropriate punishment for antihemocaste rhetoric, her professors had said.

The trainees had been given a rebel each to deal with as they pleased. It wasn’t outright spoken — but suggested, in meaningful glances and succinct, pointed turns of phrase — that leniency would not garner high marks. Terezi hadn’t worried. She had never been known for leniency. 

Her defendant had been named Haabel Zyvock. He was a florist. She knows he was a florist because she remembers marveling at someone with such an idyllic, useless job participating in something like a rebellion, but she hadn’t thought it worth noting at the time. Such an idiotic trainee — they were all idiotic trainees — she concentrated only on the immediate evidence, not the superfluous. (As any real legislacerator will tell you, real case is written in the apparently superfluous.)

She sentenced him to death, Haabel Zyvock, and cut his throat. She remembers starkly the plaintive, accepting glaze to his eyes — stiff, unseeing — as she read his fate and drew her sword. His rust-red eyes, unable to focus on the very weapon that ended him. On the very face that did it. She killed him quickly. Afterwards, she would cling to that fact, as if it were any kind of consolation.

Terezi got a 100% on that exam. Her professors praised her for “brevity, clear reasoning, and efficiency.” She was _so_ proud of herself.

Perigees later, she looked up the Laetit System. There hadn’t been a recorded rebellion there for five hundred sweeps.

New Bellona reminds her of that little moon, a bit. Their skies are the same dark grey. Their atmosphere smells the same; their gravity, relatively similar. She hates how fast it makes her move, light gravity. She prefers weight under her shoes. She appreciates a heft behind her sword, the knowledge that it will not move too quickly, when the time comes. 

She casts a sniff in the direction of the portable loadgapers. Vriska has been taking far too long, if Terezi has had time to ruminate. The air that drifts over to her is foul, and she pulls a face, but searches all the harder for Vriska’s scent amidst it.

For a moment, she thinks that the smog layer has blinded her. Then the more nuanced smells of the trolls around her begin to make themselves apparent, and she realizes that Vriska’s isn’t among them.

_Fuck._

Terezi kicks open the door of the loadgaper that Vriska chose, shattering the plastic lock. It’s empty; a twin door on the other side dangles open, revealing a small hole sawed in the chain link fence behind it. Terezi ducks through and breaks into a run.

She’s not a tracking barkbeast, she can’t smell Vriska’s path — maybe, in a sterile environment, she could get parts of it, but in the odiferous cacophony that encircles both her and her prey, the attempt is futile. Instead, she goes by what she can guess of Vriska’s course: down to the end of the street, cross the intersection, go against the crowd, it’ll be harder to follow. Move downwind, that’ll carry her scent. She must have known the loadgapers would obscure the scent of her leaving, known that Terezi wouldn’t notice until Vriska had a head start. Vriska Serket isn’t brilliant, but she’s _good_.

Terezi is much, much better.

She hooks a left downwind and starts running. The crowd parts for her again, for nobody draws attention in a neighborhood like this unless they’re capable of managing it. She draws her sword anyway, just to make clear her intent. Trolls fling themselves out of her way to avoid becoming part of a raw meat skewer. More importantly, it pauses the flow of pedestrian traffic, sets of horns freezing in their tracks to watch the crazed blind troll sprinting through the street, sword out.

All except one set of horns, which continues its course down the street, either ignorant or aware of the reason for the disturbance. Its movement in a mass of still bodies sticks out like a burgundy among nobles. One forked horn, one hooked.

Terezi pursues. 

Vriska makes it three streets south before Terezi is within scenting distance. She’s sweaty. Afraid. Not nearly as afraid as she should be, but afraid, at least. Terezi puts on a burst of speed and comes within touching distance — and then she flicks the cloak’s hood over her horns, ducks to a fraction of her height, and sheaths her sword. When Vriska casts a wary glance over her shoulder, her gaze slides right over Terezi.

She slows down, apparently under the impression that she is free, and swings into a narrow alleyway. Her breaths come fast; she leans against the wall, holding a hand over her stomach, shooting periodic looks into the open street. A smug smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. 

Terezi creeps around the corner, well-hidden among the throbbing current of trolls in and out of the alley, and then shoves Vriska up against the wall, one forearm braced against her throat.

“Fuck,” Vriska chokes.

“Well said,” Terezi agrees.

She applies a pinch more force — not enough to bruise, but enough to make drawing breath a strenuous exercise. Vriska’s claws scrabble at her, but the legislacerator’s uniform shields her from the brunt of it. 

“That was a remarkably bad idea,” Terezi tells her. “Really. So bad, in fact, we may have to invent an entirely new synonym for _bad!_ How do you feel about ‘Serketine’?”

“You can’t blame me,” Vriska spits, “for wanting freedom. I’m not your pet barkbeast, I’m not going to run alongside you and heel when you call.”

“No. I can’t blame you for aspirations of liberty. I _can_ blame you for ineptitude, however.” Terezi catches some odd looks from passersby, lowers her tone. “To be fair, your attempt was not poorly orchestrated. Just fundamentally ill-conceived.”

“Ha! You’re just pissed because I got as far as I did.”

“I am not pissed at all, Captain. When I am pissed, you will know it by the way I bypass our usual repartee and proceed straight to threats and orders. To be irritated at a convict for attempting escape is to be irritated at the featherbeast for attempting flight.”

“Which one of your boring-ass lawbooks did you get that one out of?”

“The same one,” Terezi says, very cheerful and also maintaining a precarious grip on her frustration, “that authorizes me to discipline the convict for the attempt. Instinct does not make right.”

“Fucking hell.” Vriska tips her head back against the wall, blows out her breath. “You gonna renege on your promise to the Magistragedy, then?”

“Discipline is a subjective term.”

“Not to the law, it isn’t. I’ve seen trolls get arrested the real way, I know how this works.” She kicks Terezi’s sheath. It swings gently. “You got a whip tucked away somewhere, or did the cop shows lie to me?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“You know, I’ve always thought I’d look badass with a scar, but I never was too keen on the specifics of _getting_ it. Do me a favor and avoid the eye, yeah? Vision eightfold cost me a goddamn fortune — the other one’s shit, though, needed glasses since I was three, go ahead and hack that sucker to pieces —”

“Dear God, do you ever shut _up?”_ Terezi jams her elbow more securely into Vriska’s neck, and she gasps, chitinous windhole squeezing shut. “My last defendant who talked this much ended up in a noose.” 

“Yeah,” Vriska manages, voice scraping out of the sorely abused squawk blister, “but I bet you weren’t trying to get him off, were you?”

“Usually, when they’ve got a legislacerator at their throat, trolls tend to get the hint about not talking!”

“Well, trolls are usually stupid,” she manages. “I’m not gonna let my last words be ‘please don’t cull me’ or some sniveling shit. If you’re gonna use cull me, fucking _do_ it.”

“How many times do I have to _tell_ you! I’m not going to cull you!”

“No! You’re just going to drag me all over the galaxy until you can parade me in front of a jury, and then let _them_ cull me!” Vriska spits in Terezi’s eye. It hits her glasses and dribbles down her cheek. If Terezi were a lesser legislacerator, she would be inflicting retaliatory violence against Vriska to a superfluous degree. It would be well within her legal rights to do so. No member of the Cruelest Bar would be expected to withstand this kind of disrespect, this kind of _hassle,_ even at the request of the Magistragedy. If she opened Vriska’s bloodpusher on this very street, not an official in the Empire would deny her pardon.

She doesn’t. 

“You will not die,” she intones, staring Vriska down. “You will not be culled. You will go before a _jury of the Alternian Empire_ , Vriska Serket, and you will walk out of the block a free troll.”

“Why?” It’s almost desperate, tempered with an artificial note of nonchalance. “What’s in it for you?”

“What’s right,” Terezi says tiredly, and pulls her arm away.

Vriska slumps, rubbing her windpipe warily. “What’s _right,”_ she repeats, dubious. “What’s right, by your book, is for me to swing.”

“Please stop trying to tell _me_ what ‘my book’ says,” says Terezi. “I almost assuredly know it better than you.”

Her recently reacquired prisoner shakes her head. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t inflict senseless violence.”

“You’re a fucking troll, aren’t you?”

“I’m a legislacerator first. I’m a troll second.”

Vriska lifts an eyebrow. “And I can trust you not to slide back trollways, if I piss you off?”

“My dear Captain,” Terezi says, with emphatic exhaustion. “If I were going to cull you, I would have already done it.”

Vriska snorts. “Fair,” she says. “All right. I’ll play along. Even though you’re delusional and you’re going to be wrong, and I’m going to regret doing anything that furthered your wriggler delusions.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

 

* * *

 

The commercial district of Port Imperial skulks under the shadow of the taller, more impressive business district, but it lends a convenient shade in which a wanted criminal and her keeper might linger. The streetlamps of the shipyard now dot only the occasional street corner, lit solely by the glow of pub windows and hive porch-lamps. Speedlifts whiz back and forth in the dark. The crowds thin somewhat, but grow seedier, features made menacing by poor ambiance.

“Do we have a destination in mind, Captain, or are we just ambling around, waiting to be mugged?”

“We’re almost there, hold your hoofbeasts. It’s called the Black Featherbeast. Every poor sod looking for a solid job ends up there, eventually.” She indicates a sign hanging over the arch of a dilapidated shack of an institution, a photograph of which would serve as sufficient evidence for its condemnation. The sign bears no lettering, but a carved black featherbeast with beady orange eyes. Iconography, Terezi notes, poses a neat solution to the problem of a multilingual populace.

A brass bell jangles overhead when they open the door. Few eyes follow them as they enter; lamps glimmer dim on the tables, and a bar at the back is the only well-lit part of the place. The entire space reeks of alcohol and eau de troll. A small establishment, a dingy one. None bother examining them with all that much scrutiny. Privacy is a valued commodity, here or anywhere, and one that the lowest of the low deal with in spades.

Rows of leather booths line the edges of the block. Vriska steers Terezi into one near the back door and parks herself closest to the exit, giving herself a vantage point of the rest of the block and a quick route to the door. Terezi snorts.

A waitress approaches from behind the bar. Her horns are studded with gold, flashy and scandalous. Terezi admires them. 

“Can I get you anything?” She cocks her hip expectantly. Vriska makes a show of flourishing the menu, examining it, and then placing it on the table with utmost care. She’s a showman at heart, Vriska, a born storyteller. She’s got flourish in her fingers and nothing but boast on her tongue. 

“I’ll have an Imperial Starblast,” she says, handing over the laminated drinks list, “with two shots of rum and a lime finish.”

The waitress gives her a once-over, nods. “Have that right out.” She takes the menu and disappears behind the bar, failing to notify the bartender

“I assume, given that the Imperial Starblast does not and should _never_ include a lime finish, that you gave her some kind of encoded order.” Terezi sighs. “And here I was looking forward to a good, strong intoxicant. What or whom did you ask for?”

Vriska shrugs. “Competent sailor, decent experience. She’ll ask around, see what’s in the block. Come back with the best offer.” She knits her fingers behind her head. “So we wait.”

“So we wait,” Terezi repeats, and leans forward to pluck a salt packet from the dish. “What if no one bites?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“On account of _you_ extending the offer.”

“I’m hardly the worst option,” Vriska says, and nods at a table of lowblooded laborers playing cards. “Them? Started four different mutinies, on three different ships. Nobody within five dozen leagues will hire them.”

“Would you?” Terezi’s curious. Vriska’s standards are difficult to discern; they trend low in terms of goods, given the nature of the areas she frequents, but services are a heretofore unexplored set of limitations.

“I’ll abide all kinds, Counselor, all hues, all horn shapes, all manner of grifts, scum, fugitives. I’ll welcome many a hardened criminal aboard the _Vagrant,_ but I draw my line at mutineers.” She sneers at them. “Say what you will of pirates, but we put word before blood.”

Terezi tilts her head. “That makes no sense.” 

“I mean oaths, Pyrope. Trust.”

“Trust! Among gamblignants!” Terezi laughs. “I haven’t heard a better joke since my last stint on the gallows.”

“That’s . . . gruesome, but beside the point.” Vriska rolls her shoulders, settles into the booth. “We don’t have legislacerators here to keep our bargains, so a gamblignant’s word is all she has. My name’s my bond. Once you have it, your back’s mine to protect for so long as I’ve warm blood in me.” 

Terezi tilts her head. “And you think legislacerators don’t extend each other the same courtesy.”

“I think you’d run your best friend clean through with that cane, if you thought they were breaking the law, without losing a day’s sleep over it.” Vriska does not blink.

“You don’t save lives by losing sleep.”

“Spoken like someone who’s never lost any.”

She leans over the table. “Gamblignants swear oaths to each other,” she says. “I swear an oath to justice. To the Cruelest Bar. That means taking a life or two, if necessary, when necessary. It means that some must be sacrificed for the good of the whole.” She reclines. “Not something I’d expect you to understand.”

“The whole is made of some,” Vriska insists. “There’s no greater purpose out there you’re serving by putting honest trolls in nooses. The law doesn’t spare anyone but the lawmakers. It won’t even spare you, _Lady_ Pyrope, when push comes to shove.”

“A sweep or two spent actually learning it might change your mind.”

“If you bring your nose too close to the page,” Vriska says, rapping her knuckles on Terezi’s menu, “you’re just as blind to it as you’d be at fifty paces.”

“I’m blind to it everywhere, jackass.” 

Vriska winces. The waitress swoops in and spares them from the conclusion to the conversation.

She lays a scrap of paper on the table before Vriska, ratty and curling at the sides.

“Old number,” she says. In lower, more amused tones, “Had to poke around a damned while to find someone willing to work with you, Serket.”

“What can I say? I’m a high-risk, high-reward flier.” Vriska’s smile is dazzling.

The waitress taps the paper. “The broad calls herself the Maid,” she mutters. “Got decent connections, won’t rat. She doesn’t meet in public, though.”

“Pain in the ass. Why not?”

“A long history of unpleasant confrontations,” the waitress says, unhelpfully. “She’s willing to see you out at the Harpy’s Tongue.”

Vriska scowls. “There’s nothing near there except junkyards.”

“Probably why she picked it,” Terezi reasons.

“What, ambiance?”

“So she doesn’t have to worry about an ambush.”

The waitress taps her foot. “Are you taking the tip or not? I’ve got customers besides you, Serket. And entourage.”

“Entourage!”

Vriska offers another placating smile. “But none that pay so well,” she coos, and presses a pair of denarii into the waitress’ palm. “You’re a dream, Brixto.” 

“Yeah, well, this _dream_ wouldn’t bother letting you over the threshold, if you didn’t have the coin you do.” Nonetheless, Brixto pockets the money and slaps Vriska’s shoulder. “Come again after you lose this one, I hear she’s hard to shake. Be interested to know how you’ll do it.” She saunters behind the bar, slipping a glass of port off the bar surreptitiously.

“She was very blasé, talking to someone who’d recently been arrested,” Terezi notes.

“You think an arrest means shit around here? They could haul me out the door in chains and she’d still keep my table for tomorrow’s supper.”

“Fine, fine.” Terezi grabs the paper and licks it. “What’s this ‘Harpy’s Tongue’?”

Vriska grimaces and stands. “Middle of shit-ass nowhere,” she says, “Port Imperial.”

 

* * *

 

A storm rolls in within the hour.

The Harpy’s Tongue is a narrow rock peninsula which juts into the Imperial Harbor, a weather-ravaged inlet that opens into the broader Ocean of Myr. Hardly wide enough for two grown trolls to stand on shoulder-to-shoulder, the Tongue appears dangerous at the best of times; in the middle of a pouring rainstorm, the stone slick and dark, it would claim the lives of even marginally less coordinated trolls. Terezi’s cane scrabbles for purchase on the land, and Vriska grabs fistfuls of her cloak each time she loses her even footing. It’s nigh impossible to hear each other over the screeching gales, and Terezi’s sense of smell is blunted by the onslaught of grey-blue-black water. The pair of them sway back and forth, clutching at whatever holds they can find, staggering out to the tip of the peninsula. 

“The Maid better be the best damn pilot this side of the Ophiuchan Ring,” Vriska shouts, “to merit this kind of bullshit.”

Terezi combs her hair out of her face. It lashes around her horns, tossed and tangled in the winds. “Do all your employees give you this kind of grief?”

“What?”

“ _Do all your —_ oh, never mind.” Terezi clutches the cloak tighter around her shoulders, not that it does much. “Where does a name like ‘the Maid’ come from, anyway?”

“Hell if I know!” Vriska tosses her hair. It would have been much more impressive if the wet strands hadn’t immediately whipped back around to smack her in the face. “I’ve heard worse.”

“From where?”

“Flew with a guy who called himself ‘the Cholerbear,’ coupla sweeps back. Real kiss-nook.”

“Do you have a pseudonym of your own?” It’s far from the best time to have this or any conversation, half their words lost to the wind, but Terezi craves distraction from the imminent threat of slipping and drowning. An ignoble death.

“Did have, once. Called myself _Mindfang.”_ Vriska’s chest swells. 

“That’s someone else’s name, it doesn’t count.”

“No, it’s mine. Mine by hatchright, anyway.” 

“You — what?” 

“Hatchright.” Vriska stabs a thumb at her chest, awfully pleased with herself. “I’m her flesh and blood, her name and property’s mine to use how it suits me. Dropped it a while back, figured I’d rather be known by my own name than hers, but I’ve still got her blood.”

Terezi cackles. “If I had a caegar for every time I heard a two-bit showman pretending to be the descendant of someone important, I could buy a planet.”

“I’m not lying!”

“Sure.”

“I’m —”

“Look.” Terezi points to the tip of the peninsula. A figure emerges from the rains, draped in a black peacoat, long hair thrashing. Their horns curl toward their temples in tight spirals, and a tattered skirt billows around their ankles. A wide-brimmed, well-oiled hat catches the brunt of the rain falling on their head, glistening in the poor light. 

Vriska lifts her hand. “Hail,” she barks.

The Maid lifts her hand in an identical gesture. “Hail,” she replies, voice smooth and toneless. 

They stop with five paces distancing them. At close range, Terezi can scent the dark red rim of the Maid’s pupils, the broad, elegant shape of her nose, the flat edge of her teeth. A burgundy blood, most likely. Or rust.

“Brixto said you were looking for a first mate,” says the Maid. She thumbs up the brim of her hat and gives them each a once-over. “I can help you, there.”

Vriska extends her hand. “I’m Vriska Serket. Captain of the _Vagrant,_ recently appointed captain of the _Pyrexia._ This is my associate, Avokat. She owns the latter.”

The Maid clasps Vriska’s forearm, briefly, and smiles. It’s a hollow thing. “Aradia Megido,” she says, “First Mate of the _Ghost,_ recently discharged, and I know a legislacerator when I see one.”

Terezi lifts an eyebrow in leu of Vriska’s indignant spluttering. “Well spotted. How?”

Aradia aims a pointed look at her cane. “Dragon emblem,” she says. “Blind. You cast a long shadow, Lady Pyrope.”

“Oh. A pleasant surprise.”

Vriska slips a hand into her coat, threat obvious. “Are you going to rat us out?”

Aradia frowns. “No, of course not.”

Vriska is apparently unconvinced.

“Get your prong off the gun,” Terezi says tiredly. “She’s telling the truth.”

“Fine.” Vriska removes her hand. “You willing to fly under a legislacerator, Megido?”

“Don’t see why not.” Aradia tilts her head, lets the rain sweep over her cheek. “How’d the pair of you end up traveling together?”

“She’s in my custody,” Terezi says. “Leave it at that.” 

“I’m the only reason she’s here in one piece,” Vriska adds snidely. “Leave it at _that.”_

“It’s all the same to me,” Aradia says hastily. “I just want to know who I’m flying under. If I am to be flying, that is.” 

“Fine, then. Let’s talk business.” Vriska lifts her chin, scrutinizes her. “Experience?”

“Head Engineer on the _Leland, Clockwork Majjyk, Psychoruin;_ First Mate on the _Melody, Shenanigan,_ and the _Ghost._ ”

“References?”

Her smile is toothy. “Not from anyone living.”

It’s not as though any of this matters; there aren’t a wealth of options. Terezi decides to put the formalities to a halt. “It’ll be an indefinite mission,” she says. “Flying an _Abernathy-_ class cruiser, Model A05. We’ll need a crew of fourteen, including yourself, which you’ll be responsible for choosing.”

Aradia rests on her heels. “Pay?”

“Handsome, if you can guarantee good work.” 

“I can. What’s ‘handsome’?”

Vriska opens her mouth and Terezi cuts her off before she can interfere. “Six aureii a perigee,” she says.

Vriska chokes. “ _Six —”_

“Ten,” Aradia counters.

“That’s _robbery_ —” 

“Seven.”

“Ten, or you can find yourself a new first mate.” 

“Eight,” Terezi says, “and good luck finding someone else willing to pay that much for a record like yours.”

Aradia chewed her cheek. Her eyes flit through the air around Terezi’s head, erratic and unfocused. 

“Fine,” she says. “We have an accord.” She offers her forearm in a gesture identical to Vriska’s greeting. Terezi clasps it. The rain lessens to a fine mist, settling over the Harpy’s Tongue with a soft touch.

“We have an accord,” she repeats.

Vriska flings up her hands. “Fine,” she says. “Fine! Waste away. Apparently you bleed aureii. _Eight a perigee._ I’m in the wrong business, I should get a contract with a legislacerator.”

Aradia laughs. “With your record?”

Vriska glances her way, curling her lip. “ _What_ about my record?”

“Funny little lowblood trick,” Aradia says wryly, spinning her finger around her auricular. “I hear dead people.” 

Vriska blanches. “What in hell —”

“All the time?” Terezi leans forward, curious. “That must get tiring.”

“You’d think.” Aradia drops her hand. “But they’re very courteous, when I ask them to be.”

“A talent you should have informed me of before I hired you, Madame Necromancer! I would have paid more.” 

“Alternatively,” Vriska pipes up, “she’s crazy. And we’re hiring a crazy person to fly our ship.”

“My ship.” 

“Grubsauce, groobsauce. The dead don’t talk.”

“Not to you, apparently,” Aradia says serenely. “Do you know someone called Tavros Nitram, Captain? He has a lot to say about you.”

Vriska leaps forward, fist lashing out. Terezi flicks the punch off-course with her cane, and wrenches her into a wrist lock with one fluid, quick movement.

“She apologizes for that,” she says, offering Aradia a broad, insincere smile. Vriska struggles fruitlessly against the hold. “As do I.”

Aradia shrugs. “It’s a natural reaction. Many find the idea of carrying ghosts around with them to be . . . disagreeable.”

“If you could refrain from deliberately provoking your commanding officer, I would appreciate it, all the same.”

“Sure.” Aradia grins apologetically. “I meant no harm, Captain.”

Vriska stares her down, silent and wary. 

“Fourteen trolls, was it?” Aradia claps her hands. “Easy. Where should I meet you?”

“Landing Bay Four, Industrial District,” Terezi says. “Look for the _Pyrexia.”_

“Should I bother asking how a legislacerator’s ship ended up in Port Imperial?”

“Only if you believe in the virtue of unanswered questions,” Terezi says brightly. She releases Vriska, who snatches back her hand and rubs it resentfully.

“You tell him to keep his mouth shut,” she warns Aradia.

Aradia quirks an eyebrow. “I thought you said I was crazy.”

Vriska hesitates, scowling.

Aradia steps around Terezi and starts walking back across the peninsula. “I’ll meet you with your new crew in two nights,” she calls. “My handle is _apocalpyseArisen,_ if you need to contact me.” 

She looks over her shoulder, once, briefly, an excited glint in her eyes. “Looking forward to working with you,” she says, grinning, and tips the brim of her hat. 

Vriska glowers at her retreating back. “I don’t like her,” she announces, while Aradia is still well within earshot.

Terezi elbows her. “Why? Because she spooked you?” She drums her fingers on her cane, thoughtful. “Who’s Tavros Nitram?”

Vriska starts walking quickly, forcing Terezi to trot in order to keep up. “Some kid I used to know,” she says brusquely. “He’s dead now.”

“Did you kill him?”

Vriska says nothing.

“Do you believe her? About seeing ghosts.”

Hesitation. Terezi smells tension, peppery, like cinnamon and allspice naked on the tongue.

“A lot of freaks will say they’ve got miracles up their sleeves,” Vriska says, off-handedly, at last. “No reason to believe this one.”

“You’ve got an eye that can see through walls, I can smell color, and you draw the line at _ghosts?_ ”

“If there is one goddamn infallible law of the universe,” Vriska says tightly, “if there is one principle that I insist upon — in this shithole of a galaxy — it’s that the dead stay dead. I don’t ask for much! But I ask for _that_.”

“The universe isn’t much one for principle, generally,” Terezi points out, and speeds up to take the lead. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Because I've been running from the truth_  
>  _Will never lose_  
>  _Lies come from loose teeth_  
>  _Tied to the noose_  
>  —Troll Foster the People, _Pay the Man_


	4. The Law of Heathens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“The cult of the Signless-Sufferer were known by many names throughout their existence. Contrary to popular belief, they were not a unified group; different sects emerged soon after their icon’s death, a natural consequence of several contradictions in the Signless’ scripture. Among these contradictions was the juxtaposition of a call for abolishing the hemocaste system with an absolute policy of nonviolence: for how is one to topple a violent aristocracy, some followers argued, without spilling the blood that ruled it? And should the Vast Expletive be counted as part of his canon, even though it was delivered under duress? As a consequence, lacking the coherence that it possessed during its leader’s lifetime, the Signless-Sufferer movement split into several smaller organizations, none of which ever managed to gather quite the same traction.”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

**TROLLMAIL TRANSCRIPT NO. 702**

_RECIPIENT: MAGISTRAGEDY JONIKA KISHAR_

_SENDER: LADY TEREZI PYROPE_

_DATE: 1/24/LS/9012_

TEXT:

_YOUR MOST 3XC3LL3NT CRU3LTY,_

_1 W1LL NOT W4ST3 YOUR T1M3 W1TH PL34S4NTR13S. 1ND33D, 1 W1LL NOT 3V3N W4ST3 YOUR T1M3 BY SP3C1FY1NG TH3 SUBJ3CT OF MY M3SS4G3, FOR SUCH WOULD B3 D1SR3SP3CTFUL TO BOTH YOUR T1M3 4ND D3DUCT1V3 4CUM3N. M4NY 4 GR34T3R TROLL TH4N YOU OR 1 H4V3 B33N SL41N FOR 4 F41LUR3 TO 3MPLOY CONC1S1ON._

_1 DO NOT D3M4ND 4NSW3RS FROM 4 F1GUR3 SUCH 4S YOURS3LF L1GHTLY. H4D 1 NOT TH3 GR34T3ST CONV1CT1ON OF YOUR 1NF1N1T3 W1SDOM 4ND JUR1SPRUD3NC3, 1 WOULD NOT BOTH3R 1NQU1R1NG 4S TO YOUR R34SON1NG. P3RM1T MY 1MPUD3NC3; 1 4M ONLY THR33 SW33PS OUT FROM N3OPHYT3, 4ND SUBJ3CT TO TH3 CUR1OUS Y34RN1NGS OF MY YOUTH._

_BUT YOU 4ND 1, YOUR 3XC3LL3NC3, 4R3 HON3ST TROLLS. SO 1 DO NOT TH1NK YOU W1LL B3 OFF3ND3D BY M3 4SK1NG 4S TO TH3 R34SON1NG B3H1ND YOUR MOST R3C3NT 4SS1GNM3NT._

_NOT TH4T 1T 1S B3YOND MY C4P4C1T13S, C3RT41NLY. NOR WOULD 1 DR34M OF R3J3CT1NG YOUR JUDGM3NT. 1 ONLY S33K UND3RST4ND1NG, SO 1 M4Y B3TT3R C4RRY OUT WH4T YOU H4V3 4SK3D OF M3._

_1 TH4NK YOUR BOUNDL3SS P4T13NC3 4ND B3N3VOL3NC3, SHOULD YOU S33 F1T TO 4NSW3R MY L3TT3R. 1F NOT, 1 TH4NK TH3M 4NYW4YS, 4ND TRUST TH3Y 4R3 B31NG B3TT3R 3MPLOY3D 1N TH3 S3RV1C3 OF OUR GLOR1OUS 3MP1R3._

_YOURS MOST JUD1C14LLY,_

_T3R3Z1 PYROP3_

 

**TROLLMAIL TRANSCRIPT NO. 705**

_RECIPIENT: MAGISTRAGEDY JONIKA KISHAR_

_SENDER: LADY TEREZI PYROPE_

_DATE: 1/25/LS/9012_

TEXT:

_YOUR MOST 3XC3LL3NT CRU3LTY,_

_1 DO NOT CONS1D3R MYS3LF 4N 1RKSOM3 D1SC1PL3, UND3R NORM4L C1RCUMST4NC3S, BUT TH3R3 COM3S 4 T1M3 1N 3V3RY TROLL'S L1F3 WH3R3 SH3 MUST R33V4LU4T3 H3R S3LF-1M4G3._

_H4V1NG NOT R3C31V3D 4 R3PLY FROM YOU W1TH R3G4RDS TO MY F1RST OR S3COND M3SS4G3S, 1 F33L SOM3 CONC3RN FOR TH3 TROLLM41L SYST3M YOU 3MPLOY. 1F YOU H4V3 R34D MY F1RST TWO L3TT3RS, PL34S3 S1GN1FY TH4T YOU H4V3 DON3 SO, SO 1 M4Y R3ST QU13T3D 4ND CONT3NT TH4T TH3R3 1S NOTH1NG WRONG W1TH MY CL13NT._

_1F, 1N PR3P4R1NG TH3 R3SPONS3, YOU F33L TH3 1MPULS3 TO 4TT4CH 4 L1N3 OR TWO 3XPL41N1NG YOUR CHO1C3 OF CL13NT 4ND PR3ORD41N3D 4RGUM3NT4T1V3 4PPRO4CH TO H3R TR14L, 1 WOULD NOT B3 UNGR4T3FUL._

_4LL TH3 S4M3, 1T 1S OF NO D1FF3R3NC3 TO M3. 1 W1LL P3RFORM TH3 S4M3, R3G4RDL3SS, 4ND HOP3 TO 1NSP1R3 PR1D3._

_YOURS MOST JUD1C14LLY,_

_T3R3Z1 PYROP3_

 

**TROLLMAIL TRANSCRIPT NO. 705**

_RECIPIENT: MAGISTRAGEDY JONIKA KISHAR_

_SENDER: LADY TEREZI PYROPE_

_DATE: 1/26/LS/9012_

TEXT:

_YOUR MOST 3XC3LL3NT CRU3LTY,_

_P3RH4PS 1 H4V3 OV3R3MPLOY3D C1RCUMLOCUT1ON. 4LLOW M3 TO 3XPL41N MYS3LF._

_CONS1D3R4T1ONS OF MY CL13NT'S POS1T1ON 4ND P4ST PURSU3 M3 3V3N 4FT3R 1 H4V3 SUCCUMB3D TO TH3 SOPOR. 1NV4S1V3 1NQU1R13S 4S TO MY ROL3 1N H3R COND3MN4T1ON OR 4CQU1TT4L H4V3 COST M3 M4NY 4 PR3C1OUS M1NUT3 1N TH3 R3CUP3R4COON, WH1CH, 4S YOU UND3RST4ND, 1S D4MN1NG WH3N UND3RT4K1NG PR3P4R4T1ONS FOR 4 TR14L. CONC3RN1NG 4 TR14L 4S 1MPORT4NT 4S TH1S ON3, MY UNCONSC1OUS TH1NKP4N H4S F41L3D M3 TO 4 TRULY 3GR3G1OUS 3XT3NT._

_1T R3M41NS W1TH1N YOUR POW3R TO H4LT TH3S3 CONC3RNS W1TH BUT 4 WORD OR TWO TOSS3D 1NTO MY 1NBOX. 1 4M NOT GR33DY. 4 S1MPL3 "SHUT TH3 FUCK UP" WOULD SUFF1C3. >:]_

_PL34S3, M4G1STR4G3DY. T4K3 P1TY ON TH1S POOR L3G1SL4C3R4TOR; SH3 S33KS ONLY TO DO H3R JOB._

_1 R3M41N, 3V3R F41THFUL:_

_YOURS MOST JUD1C14LLY,_

_T3R3Z1 PYROP3_

 

* * *

 

Aradia Megido appears on the dock before the _Pyrexia_ three nights after her employment with fourteen trolls in a neat line behind her.

Terezi’s the first off the gangplank, examining them with thoughtful sniffs. “You said two nights, Megido,” she reprimands. “I deal exclusively in the precise.” 

“Apologies. Finding a suitable communications officer took longer than expected.” She lays an affectionate punch on the shoulder of the nearest troll, a spindly-horned little veridian with a narrow nose. “My standards are a bit higher than this town comfortably accommodates.”

“What luck. So are mine.” Terezi leans forward and takes an enormous whiff. “Can I trust these here Port Imperialites not to steal me blind in my sleep?” She cackles at her own joke. Someone has to. 

A nervous titter runs through the crowd. She snaps her jaw shut and glares at them.

“Laughing at a blind girl,” she says flatly. “Classy bunch, you lot.” 

Silence grips them. She snickers.

“They’ll do,” she says, and beckons them in welcome. “Bring them onboard.” 

She hangs back with Aradia to see them safely loaded, making note of which ones flinch when they catch a glimpse of her eyes. They’re the ones she likes to pick on — liked to pick on, back when she had her old crew — and the ones she’s least likely to have trouble with, the ones who are afraid of her. Respect is terribly easy to manipulate out of people; sometimes, it’s as easy as a twitch of the glasses. 

“By the by,” she says casually, “we’ve got about twenty dead bodies onboard that’ve been rotting there for three nights, now. Gonna need two of these unlucky living ones to help us dispose of them.” 

“Oh, I know,” Aradia says, to Terezi’s great surprise. “I’ve seen them hanging around.” Gone is the mystic from the Harpy’s Tongue. In plain moonlight, Aradia is a frank, straightforward troll, who speaks clear and calm.

“Don’t tell me what they say,” Terezi says, already on edge at the idea. The living do enough gossiping. She doesn’t need or want to know the opinions of the dead.

“I’d never. I don’t tell people what their ghosts say about them unless they ask.” Aradia pats her pocket jovially. “Or pay, if I’m low on coin.”

“Smart. As the adage goes, ‘If you’re good at something —”

“‘Fleece the unlucky motherfucker who needs you to do it,’” Aradia agrees.

“Verily.” Terezi follows the last crewman into the ship. 

They gawk at the interior of the _Pyrexia_ like she’s a fine museum, even smeared as she is with blood and juggalo viscera — or maybe because of it. One of them actually reaches out their hand to touch the window, smearing soot fingerprints over the double-layered glass. Terezi whacks him lightly across the wrist with her cane.

“Don’t touch,” she warns, and he scuttles away, properly terrified. She doesn’t laugh, but it’s not for lack of amusement. 

Aradia brings up the rearmost, hauling the gangplank closed behind her. “So, where’s the pirate?” She brushes off her hands, flicks one of the crew on the auricular to keep them moving. “Don’t tell me you’ve given your captive the run of the place.”

Terezi grimaces. “A necessary breach of propriety,” she says. “The good captain was the only person onboard who knew how to identify a power coupler.” 

“So you let her poke around in your engine block?”

Terezi shrugs. “I trust her self-preservation instinct enough to be sure she won’t do anything to the ship.”

Aradia hums skeptically, but doesn’t press the point. She instead begins on another: “I would have thought that a legislacerator — such as yourself — would have had her head rolling by now.”

“Prior to meeting her,” Terezi says, with little affection, “so would I.”

“Extenuating circumstances?” Aradia’s look is mildly curious, neither invasive nor irate at Terezi’s recalcitrance. She suggests the excuse graciously, like a highblood lady offering a cup of tea.

“The extenuatingest,” Terezi agrees, and decides that she likes Aradia Megido, possibly very much. 

As if summoned by rumination over her liberties, Vriska rounds the corner, shouldering her way through Aradia’s crew members. A stain of engine grease stretches from nose to auricular, and the overcoat has been discarded, her sleeves shoved up to her elbows; her forearms are grimy with oil and her fingernails, caked up with dust. But her grin stretches toothy across her face, and she says, “Found those power couplers. Hi, Megido.”

“Captain.” Aradia’s tone strikes an even balance between polite consternation and respect. “Reporting for duty.” 

“Uh, great. Head on over to the cockpit, check out your digs. Cabins are near the aft, hook a right around that hallway and you can’t miss ‘em.” Vriska shuffles to the side to let Aradia pass, looking less like a captain and more like a tour guide. Out of place, even compared to the newcomers, who’ve been aboard for all of five minutes.

“Hope she got a mechanic,” Vriska says distantly, watching the last of them trickle past. “I’m actually shit with power couplers.”

“What were you _doing_ down there, then?”

“I can _find_ them just fine, Pyrope, but there’s a difference between hacking out a burnt battery and wiring a new one. You know I wouldn’t poke around in this girl’s innards if I didn’t think I knew what I was doing.” Vriska thumps the _Pyrexia’s_ wall affectionately, as if referring to a treasured, wrigglerhood friend. Already possessive of the machine, having not yet spent a week within her doors.

“Yes,” Terezi concedes, “but you almost invariably think you know what you’re doing, at a disproportionate rate to the frequency with which you actually do.”

Vriska rolls her eyes. “You talk like it’d kill you to be concise.”

“It’s possible. I’ve never tried.” 

“Funny.” Vriska rolls her sleeves down again, casting brief frowns at the smudges on the silk. “Seeing as she’s got a mechanic, seems like a fine time for you and I to step out. Many prongs makes a dysfunctional nutritionblock.”

“You’re mangling metaphors, there.”

“You caught my drift.” She jerks her thumb down the corridor from whence she came. “Give me a minute to get my jacket, we can go find some of those shield generators that Ahkmet was complaining about. She’s been on my ass about them for nights.”

Terezi shrugs. “It’s all the same to me.” 

It isn’t, and in part because there isn’t a subject in the galaxy that Terezi Pyrope doesn’t have an opinion on. Further, though, she’s been on the ship for three nights and they haven’t gone _anywhere;_ her feet itch, and she’s beginning to develop a twitch. Sparring with a dummy does only so much. She’s smelled it in Vriska, too, the agitated roll of her shoulders, the longing glances at the windows and exterior doors. They’re itching for something to do, and Vriska’s been on her best behavior — hasn’t tried to escape _once,_ except for that time with the heating vent and the crowbar, which was quickly solved by a close encounter with Terezi’s sword, anyway — Terezi would daresay that both of them deserve an outing, even if a perfunctory one. 

It is a damning talent, being able to convince oneself of anything.

Vriska’s face registers brief, elated surprise. “Really? Really. Fantastic. I know this great little bar downtown, and it’s damn near reputable, too —”

“This is an outing of business, not pleasure. Although, for the record: reputable? Honestly.” 

“Nobody’s died there in three sweeps, I’d consider that a success stamp, if nothing else — anyway, neither you nor I’ve eaten anything but protein rations in three nights. Wouldn’t you rather put something on your lickstump you can _taste_?”

“Phrasing.”

“That was weak and you know it.”

Terezi chews her cheek thoughtfully. Codes against fraternization with prisoners are lax — relevant to the situation insofar as she wouldn’t be _breaking_ the law by going out to dinner — but they are only lenient because it is presumed no legislacerator in her right mind would let her charge out of the cellblock, much less allow the convict to prance around a city.

Vriska fastens the buttons on her cuffs and pretends not to be hanging eagerly on Terezi’s answer. Terezi is frankly astonished that she managed anything in the criminal sphere. She’s a terrible liar. Her tell is a tremor in her hands, clear as the horns on her head. Vriska’s body language makes glass seem opaque in comparison. 

“A short meal,” she allows, and Vriska slaps the wall with enthusiasm.

“Attagirl _,_ Pyrope. Best lawyer I ever had. Be right back.” She turns tail and charges off, presumably in pursuit of her coat.

Terezi spins her cane contemplatively, sniffs at the window. New Bellona is tidally locked; the nights don’t end so much as they slip and slide into each other, stretches of pitch darkness distanced by an hour, perhaps, of paler skies. The sun burns only at midday, and then, not to half extent that the homeworld’s sun did. One’s eyes could easily bear its perusal, if one were inclined to peruse. 

She sometimes wonders what it would be like, if her eyes had never perused. More convenient, certainly, not to have a live transmission wire of a person’s emotional status while in their immediate proximity. Less convenient, though, to be deprived of it.

“M’ coming,” Vriska announces, her coat stuck awkwardly around her shoulders as she tries to walk and dress herself simultaneously. Her holster bounces against her thorax. 

“Your left prong goes in the left hole.”

“Fuck you,” Vriska says, lacking spirit. She wrenches the coat straight. “So I don’t intend on freezing to death. Sue me.”

“There are ways to protect against the elements besides an ostentatious greatcoat, Captain. You can admit your flair for the dramatic.”

“You’re throwing a rocks from a pretty glass hive,” Vriska says, “with those bloody spectacles.”

Terezi, understanding the virtue of discretion, has changed into something more suitable than a legislacerator’s red vest — a brown tunic, with puffed sleeves reminiscent of Vriska’s own, and a pair of sensible iron-toed boots, to weigh her down on the planet’s gravity-deprived surface. The glasses, however, she could not part with. What is a legislacerator without her look? 

“Better flashy eyewear than a peep show for my corneas,” she replies, and taps the rims.

“Eugh. Guess so.” Vriska fiddles with her holster, distracting herself from Terezi’s woebegone oculars. “How’d you end up with those, anyway?”

“Gift from the Handmaid. How many times are you going to pose the question expecting an honest answer?”

“All right, we’re not there yet. I get you. I get you.” Vriska plants her boot on the gangplank and proffers an elbow, satirically chivalrous, utterly ridiculous. “How about I buy you dinner first?”

“Why, Captain! I’m not that kind of girl.” Terezi swats down Vriska’s elbow and darts ahead. “But if you’re good, I’ll let you take me to your ‘reputable’ and ‘murder-free’ restaurants.”

“ _Swoon.”_ Vriska saunters along in her wake, grinning. Terezi can smell the satisfaction rolling off her in bright, slow waves. “Be still, my throbbing bloodpusher.”

 

* * *

 

“So then,” she says, gesturing expressively with a glass of purple liquor, “he says, ‘Wwell, I’ve got a port-pointin’ cannon wwith your name on it, Vvris,’ and then he goes and he — he fires, and it hits _his own fucking point ship.”_ Vriska tosses back her head and cackles, high and grating. “ _Vagrant_ ’s already three leagues over by the time he’s got it out of the way, and he’s screaming his head off — Admiral of the Empress’ fucking fleet, squalling like a wriggler for his lusus!”

Terezi snickers. “And you got away.”

The ‘reputable’ restaurant ended up being a cheap joint tucked in between two taller buildings downtown, a small block with maybe a dozen tables in total and a single, dangling light fixture, hanging in the center of the block. The food was good, though — strange meats that tasted like a split between cluckbeast and moobeast, drenched in a sweet-spicy sauce, and the drinks were bad but blindingly alcoholic, which seemed to fit Vriska’s taste. 

“Well, he sent people after me, of course. But they were hardly a match! And they couldn’t shoot to kill, anyway, because culling the Admiral’s kismesis — not a shining career move.” 

“I imagine not.” Terezi swirls her drink. It’s something called Cull in the Afternoon, although she’s fairly certain it’s just watered-down absinthe. Vriska had ordered it for her, and Terezi, in a moment of less than shining judgment, had accepted it. It tastes awful. Vriska seems not to mind. On the other hand, Terezi is quickly deducing that Vriska would drink engine oil if someone told her it was alcoholic.

“Most stories with him go like that.” Vriska’s feet perch on the table, soles of her filthy boots bared for all to see. “I get him, and he tries to get me back, and he fails. Complains about it. Man, but messing with him was fun.” She rests her glass against her lip, almost contemplative. “Almost miss the fucker.”

“Perpetual victory doesn’t sound like a very good kismesissitude.”

“Oh, God, no. He was a shit kismesis.” She sounds almost mournful. “Never gave me an ounce of trouble. Not once.”

Terezi sets down her cocktail. “Not technically accurate.”

“Well. Yeah, I guess. It figures that he wouldn’t do shit until after I broke up with him.” She sighs. “The _Ampora_ Deposition. Bureaucratic equivalent of posting nudes.”

“I . . . guess?”

“What’s in it, anyway?” Vriska examines her claws, feigning disinterest. “I never got my hands on a copy.”

“It wasn’t exactly a private document.”

“Maybe to legislacerators,” Vriska bluffs, and Terezi wonders why she’s lying. Telling _when_ someone’s dishonest is a simple matter; why they’re being so is almost invariably a far more interesting question.

Still, she postpones the inquiry. “For the Criminal Court of the Alternian Empire,” she rattles off instead. “Case of _Vriska Serket vs. Alternia._ Deposition of Eridan Ampora. Court Reporter: Vesper Linnet. Question One: ‘What is your current relation to—”

“I didn’t mean _recite_ the damn thing,” Vriska complains. “Just gimme the gist of it.”

“The ‘gist’ of it was ninety-three pages of eyewitness testimony, incriminating you for all but a fraction of your current charges. Not to mention seventeen obscene tangents.”

“Gross. _Gross.”_

“The court reporter thought so, too,” Terezi remarks. “There were those who enjoyed it.”

“ _Gross!”_

“I concur.” She drinks. “I wouldn’t think you’d care about what he had to say.”

“I don’t! In fact, I feel better knowing he was bitter about the whole thing.” Vriska frowns at her glass, which is rapidly dwindling in content. “I just wanted to see.” Her eloquence has declined over the course of the meal. 

“See what?”

She shakes herself. “I never hated him,” she says. “I just liked pissing him off.”

The conversation has taken a turn for the distinctly uncomfortable. Terezi isn’t half drunk enough to have an emotional conversation with her own prisoner. “Incidentally,” she says, struggling to strike a tone of nonchalance, “most of the evidence we will be battling comes from your ex’s deposition. That might give you some incentive to hate him.”

“You mean all that _true_ stuff?” Vriska huffs with dry amusement. “You’ll be battling facts, trying to win my trial.”

“Facts do battle for no one and nothing, just as a sword does battle for no one and nothing, independent of its user.” Terezi drums her fingers on the hilt of her glass. “There’s an angle for every case. Even yours.”

“So what is it?”

Terezi thinks of the blank document sitting on her husktop, labeled ‘ _Briefing for VS.’_

“I’m still crafting my argument.”

Vriska snorts. “Ah. Okay. So you don’t have one, then.”

“I am _crafting it._ I have lost nine cases in my career. _Nine.”_

“Gonna be ten, when you’re done with me,” Vriska mutters, and lifts her glass to her lips.

Terezi’s hand darts out and grabs Vriska’s wrist, grip like steel. Vriska starts and spills vodka down her shirt.

“Enough,” she snaps. “You are _not_ the worst criminal in Alternian history, much as your ego would like to believe it, and far worse than you have gone without punishment. Your defeatist nonsense is nothing except a propagation of self-pity, and the defense _will not have it!”_

Vriska’s lip curls. “I —” Her eyes drift over to the door of the restaurant. She tenses. “Shit.”

“What?” Terezi drops her arm and twists, sniffing vehemently. 

“There’s a load of highbloods coming in and they’re not dressed for dinner. _Shit.”_ Terezi shoves back her chair; Vriska waves her down violently. “No, no, sit the fuck down, don’t draw their attention. We don’t know they’re coming for _us.”_

“Do you know who we _are?_ ”

“Just — sit down,” Vriska hisses, pulling her feet off the table, and adds, almost desperately, “Please.”

Terezi reluctantly eases into her chair. Not a moment too soon, either. The door swings open, carrying a gust of foul-smelling air in from the street, and a group of nine highblood trolls struts through the entrance. They’re dressed in various degrees of splendor, all spiffed up to the nines with brass and silks, and stick out like hogbeasts at a dinner party. The block falls quiet. A handful of patrons draw their specibi. 

One, wearing a feather-tipped hat and a machine gun the length of their leg, steps to the head of the group. “Morning,” he says. His voice carries the nasal lift of someone who’s done most of his breathing through a couple slits in his neck, and isn’t used to processing oxygen through the windpipe. Seadweller. 

“Mercenaries,” Vriska whispers. Two fingers are braced against her temple; her gaze dances between the highbloods. “Nine of them. No backup.”

“Armed?”

“To the fangs.”

“If you lotta scumbloods would take your leave just now,” the mercenary adds, “we’ll keep our hands to ourselves.” 

The remark doesn’t land well. 

One of the lowblood mutineers from the card game rises and aims his specibus, a snub-nosed pistol, between the highblood’s oculars. “Gimme one good reason,” he demands, bristling with the collective rage of a block just insulted.

The mercenary turns and fires three shots into the troll’s face. An explosion of amber paints the wall behind his head, and the body tumbles onto the table, spilling cards everywhere. The other trolls scatter. “There’s three,” the mercenary says cheerfully, hefting his weapon. “I’ve got several others, if anyone’s in the debating mood.” 

Nobody is, in fact, in the debating mood. They leave quickly, chairs scraping the floor and tables wobbling with the mass flight to the exits. Vriska grabs Terezi’s shoulder and tries to guide her along with the crowd, knitting in between taller trolls to stay hidden. It’s no use. One of the mercenaries catches sight of her horns and barks, “Serket, you stay here.”

Vriska pulls up short and mutters something foul under her breath. 

“What do they want _you_ for?” Terezi scrunches her nose, sniffing deeply. “Do you owe them money?”

“Do I look like someone who keeps track of the trolls she owes money?” Vriska turns and plasters a smile on her face. “Hey, there, you trigger-happy fucks. Whaddaya want with me?”

Terezi sighs. “So diplomacy’s not our strategy, then.” 

“I was never all that good at it, no.”

“ _I_ happen to be —”

“Nothing,” the head mercenary says, saccharine with highblood courtesy. “The Most Righteous and Divine Church of Mirth, on the other hand, has taken an interest.”

“Oh, really?” Vriska rocks back on her heels. “How much of an interest?”

“Five hundred aureii’s worth of interest.”

“Holy shit,” Terezi says, for once honestly unable to restrain herself.

“Huh,” Vriska says. “They’re upping their prices.”

“No shit. For you and the tealblood, it’s seven hundred.”

“I’m only two hundred?” 

“Chill, Counselor, you’ve been at this for less time than I have. Two hundred for a starting bounty’s not bad.” Terezi opens her mouth to object, and Vriska pounces on the opportunity. “So you assholes are looking to bring me in?”

“Or whatever piece of you’s easiest to carry. ‘Dead or alive,’ the bounty said.”

Terezi stiffens. “But that’s — _so_ illegal,” she cries. “Even if she were under the Church’s jurisdiction — which she _isn’t_ , by the way, as long as I’m assigned to her — a subjugglator must still be _present_ for the hearing —”

“Interesting,” says the highblood, “and, incidentally, not my problem.”

“It’s very much your problem!” Terezi draws her sword and gets a gun aimed at her thinkpan for the trouble. “For you see, as long as you persist in your current course of action, you will soon find yourself without a head!”

It’s sheer schmaltz, the dramatic announcement and quippy one-liners, the timed reveal of the blade. Something you would see in a courtblock soap, all crowd-pleasing, rabble-rousing good fun. The Magistragedy would be cradling her head in her hands. Her _Courtblock Antics 101_ professor, on the other hand, would be beaming. 

The highblood rolls his eyes. His group, however, bristles with unease, which was the general intent of the gesture, anyway. “They have a saying about knives and gunfights.”

“Clearly, they’ve never seen me with a knife.”

“What,” Vriska whispers, her pitch skyrocketing, “the _fuck_ are you doing.”

“My _job_ , Captain. Shut up and let me do what I’m paid for.” Raising her voice, Terezi announces, “You are under arrest for crimes against the Alternian Empire and her agents, namely: threatening capture and unlawful detention of a legislacerator. You have the right to notify your moirail of your impending demise.”

The leader snickers. It erupts into a full-blown laugh, shaking the very gun he wields. Poor form, on his behalf, but because he’s got eight bulgelickers watching his back, he can afford it. Terezi hates the lack of professionalism. It just screams highblood mercenary. She can sniff the violet on him, anyway, he’s rich enough that he doesn’t need their bounty money; this is a crime of greed. The most despicable. She will enjoy his dispatch immensely. 

“Cute,” he says. “Your last words are gonna be a declaration of arrest. That’s some beautiful fuckin’ irony, right there.”

“Irony,” Terezi says lightly, surveying the block and finding nothing particularly in her favor, “is incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result. Too many legislacerators have issued arrest declarations as their last words for mine to be _ironic.”_ Feeling spiteful, she adds, “Read a dictionary.” 

“You know,” he says, sounding thoughtful, for a person Terezi’s certain has had a grand total of three thoughts slide across his pan since he hatched. “I almost felt bad about killing you, at the beginning, there. You’re almost not worth the pain it’d be to have a legislacerator’s death on my record.” He hefts the gun. “Changed my mind about it, though.” 

“It must be a great advantage,” Terezi says — stalling, desperately seeking an edge, because as dumb as he is, he’s correct in his estimation of how a swords fares against a machine gun — “to have such mercurial moral convictions.”

“It must be —”

“Hey,” Vriska yelps. It startles one of the rear mercenaries so bad he bangs his head on the doorframe; his friends titter. “If you’re gonna blow my head off, lemme take a last drink, yeah? Don’t let a girl die sober.”

The leader squints at her in utter bemusement. “What? You know — what the hell. Sure. You wanna die drunk, die fuckin’ drunk.” He gestures with the gun. “Chop chop.”

“Thanks. You’re a pal.” 

Vriska lifts her drink and downs it. She lowers the glass to the table, and when it touches the wood, she slips her fingers around the handle of the gun that’s settled beside her plate. The mercenaries don’t notice it. Terezi’s bloodpusher does an ecstatic flip.

“Hey, Pyrope,” she mumbles. “Your sniffer still working?”

The leader takes aim at Vriska’s nose.

“Why in the Empress’ recondite name wouldn’t it be?”

He squares his shoulders.

“Good,” she says, and shoots the light fixture. 

Glass shatters and the bar plunges into darkness. The ruffians descend into chaos, shouting and stumbling over each other in panic. Terezi springs.

She lunges for the leader and cuts his throat without him ever knowing she moved. The second and third go similarly, with quicks stabs through the trachea, and asphyxiate on the floor while she’s cleaning up the fourth and fifth — dead in two elegant cuts, slipped in between ribs like thread through needle. The sixth, having finally realized what’s going on, has drawn their specibus: a pair of long knives, about the width of Terezi’s palm, with serrated edges. She ducks under their first blind swing and drives her sword up their nook, eliciting her first scream. It is an inelegant method, and one she does not prefer, but consistently functional.

Seven, eight, nine all have their specibi out when she kills six, and have clustered back-to-back-to-back near the entrance. Terezi vaults over the table and stabs one in the thigh, deals a kick to the back of another’s knees, forcing her to kneel. From there it’s a quick backhand to open her throat. The seventh staggers upright, clutching his bloody thigh, but with only one hand on his double-handed sword, he’s unprepared to deflect a swooping attack on his abdomen, which spills his intestines on the floor. Nine puts up a valiant effort, brandishing his mace with desperate aggression, but she hacks off his foot at the ankle and he goes down screaming. She quiets him by poking a hole in his right lung. 

Match scratches on flypaper and a lantern ignites. Vriska lifts the torch and lends light to a block of corpses. Her jaw dangles agape.

Terezi wipes her sword on Nine’s clothes, once, twice, and then sheaths it. “Good idea,” she says.

Vriska eyes the pile of three dead trolls in the corner. “Holy shit.” 

“What did you _think_ I carried the sword for?” 

“This,” Vriska concedes, “but, like. Less _this_. Holy shit.” 

Terezi’s lips quirk. “You’ve seen legislacerators fight before. You’ve killed your share of them.”

“Not in the dark. Not blind. And not like that.” Vriska nudges one with her shoe. “There go my plans for killing you.” 

“Don’t beat yourself up over it. You’re enterprising. I’m sure you’ll come up with some other way to murder me.” Terezi stoops and wrests the signet ring from the leader’s finger, a deep violet circle with three interlocking loops.

“Are you _looting?”_

“No,” Terezi says curtly. “I’m going to run a search on his sign and report his death as a casualty of necessity.”

“You have to report the people you kill?” Vriska grimaces. “That’s one way to stem bloodshed.”

“Not for everybody. Some legislacerators are positively inundated with paperwork, as a matter of fact.” Two didn’t wear a signet ring; she kicks him until he flops over on his back and uses her wristtop to take a picture of the sign on his shirt. All are highbloods except for nine, who bleeds light-season-sky blue over the neat hardwood. The owner’s going to kill Terezi, if he ever has the globes to track her down. 

“So I’ve heard.” Vriska comes over and helps to roll them onto their backs. “Gotta be a pain in the ass, though.”

“Most have their clerkillers do it for them. My age denies me the privilege of having a grunt to tidy up my messes.”

A sharp intake of breath. “How old are you, then? Have I been running around with a wriggler?”

“I’m seventeen, thanks,” Terezi says, too absentminded to scold her for the prying question, attempting to haul the fifth troll onto their back. 

“Oh, thank goodness. You’re only — _seventeen?”_ Vriska’s incredulous, for some reason. “You look thirty!”

“What can I say? Managing people like you on the regular ages a troll.”

“I’m just saying, with the bags, and the posture — you could stand to put some weight on, you know.”

“Why, Captain, how forward. Are you going to shoosh me and ask me to talk about my feelings, next?”

“Fuck you, I was picking on your skinny ass and you know it.” 

“Most legislacerators don’t take this kind of disrespect from their prisoners,” Terezi notes, and tries not to contemplate the legitimacy of the statement. Most legislacerators aren’t in her position. It’s reasonable to have a rapport with someone whose life you’re trying to save.

“Are you going to cull me?”

Terezi ignores her.

“Are you going to hurt me?”

Terezi doesn’t answer.

Vriska hums with enormous satisfaction. “Well, then, I’ll keep on disrespecting.” She produces the incredibly mangled bit of logic like a wriggler producing a collection of crayon scribbles for their lusus and claiming it as high art.

Terezi remains silent, not just because to dignify the argument with rebuttal would be a disgrace to both of them, but because a glint of silver on the blueblood’s neck has caught the light of Vriska’s lantern, and her bloodpusher has started hammering like a drunken drummer. She reaches into his shirt and breaks the chain, removing the pendant. 

It’s two interlocking swoops, a sign, but not the troll’s — it’s the Sign, the heretical symbol _._ Heathen and unlawful and patently _there._ Terezi hasn’t seen it since her lesson in Cullable Offenses, where it was noted once, in passing, scrawled in the margins of the page under the label of ‘dead cults’ and the broader category of ‘things that don’t exist anymore, and thus don’t merit a whole lot of concern.’ But here it is. Undeniable existence.

“Uh. Pyrope?” Vriska sounds almost concerned, which alarms them both, so her next words overcompensate with forced flippancy. “I’m just giving you shit! Didn’t think it would bug you this much, jeeeeeeeez.”

“Shut up.” It comes out flatter than she meant it. Vriska is so shocked by the vehemence of the command that she actually obeys it.

Terezi runs a thumb over the upper curl of the sign. Remembers looking it up, after class, to find but a single, government-approved webpage with a list of cullable offenses associated with it: _It is illegal to wear the Sign. It is illegal to write the Sign. It is illegal to propagate or promote media bearing the Sign. It is illegal to say the name of he who first bore the Sign. It is illegal to speak well of the Sign. It is illegal to speak ill of the Sign. It is illegal to speak of the Sign at all._

 

* * *

 

The first time Terezi Pyrope saw a real legislacerator, she was five sweeps old.

They were holding a public execution on Alternia, for once, which was a rarity; even rarer was an execution that Terezi was within range of. It was scheduled for moonrise in the city of Ichthus, a joint hanging for seven traitors to the Empire. They advertised it on every radio program within fifty miles, plastered local hamlets with posters of the event, constructed the gallows a good three weeks before they were necessary. The locals were rabid for it when the day came around.

She wasn’t blind yet, back then; she could see with crystal clarity the shape of the nooses in the wind, bucking and swaying, as if burdened by the phantom weight of victims not yet dead. At moonrise, the sun had just slipped under the horizon, and still burned her eyes and her skin, but not so badly that trolls weren’t already leaving their hives to start their evenings. The legislacerators were already there when Terezi arrived, busying themselves for the affair. The nimble slip and slide of their fingers through rope fascinated her, as did the casual skill with which they looped the knots over the sturdy wooden beams. They even joked amongst each other as they did it. Gallows humor, of course.

One of them noticed her. He was a short, portly tealblood, with an angular sign composed of interlocking triangles. Terezi can still remember the way his boots shone scarlet in the newborn moonlight, the dignified curl of his collar, the stumpy, inward-curling horns. “Hey, grub,” he called. “Come to watch the show?”

She was wearing her nicest, which wasn’t all that nice, but it had a lot of teal, and she’d brought her strife specibus with her — strapped awkwardly to a belt designed for adult trolls, the sword scraped along the ground as she walked and jangled when she moved too fast. She didn’t know what she’d been thinking, wearing it. Probably a misguided attempt to impress the legislacerators: show them, _hey, I’m just like you!_

“Yeah,” she said casually, trying to copy his manner. “Nothing better to do.”

His laugh was raucous. “How old are you? Three sweeps? Four?”

“I am five and a half sweeps old,” she said stiffly. “And there is no age barrier on serving the Empress.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Fair enough.” 

She pointed to the armored speedlift that was parked a few dozen yards from the gallows. “Are the traitors in there?”

“That they are. Back luck for you, though; execution won’t start for fifteen minutes, at least.” He shrugged. “Best find something else to do.”

“I know when it starts. I wanted to watch you set up.” She pointed to the noose. “Is that a Ffinchian double-overhand?” 

He barked out a surprised laugh. “It is. You have an interest in knots?”

“No, I have an interest in nooses.”

This seemed to please him. “You want to wear the teal someday, little sister?”

“More than anything,” she said earnestly, and he smiled. 

“Come up.” 

Her bloodpusher palpitated wildly. She grabbed the edge of the platform and hauled herself up, refusing his offered hand, scrambling to her feet. The hanging slate was a good five feet above the ground; they must have been executing someone tall. Three or four other legislacerators strode to and fro, checking knots, examining beams, testing the lever. The platform bustled with productivity, with purpose. Terezi soaked it in, tried to impress every moment upon her thinksponge.

“We’re doing what’s called a _group execution_ ,” the legislacerator told her. “You know those?”

She struggled to keep her tone respectful. “It seems a simple point of deduction, Counselor.” She caught his amused glance, but busied herself by inspecting the intricacies of the hanging knot. There was only so much that a girl could do with storebought supplies and online tutorials. And hanging a scalemate really didn’t compare to the real thing. 

“Ah. Do you know what we’re executing them for?”

“I had wondered.”

“Well, you’re in for a treat, then.” He gestured to the speedlift. “That in there’s four honest-to-Empress traitors to the Empire, and three accessories.” 

“What degree?”

“First degree.” He imbued his words with all the importance of someone invoking a deity. “Plotting a —”

“Plotting a military coup with intent and capability for regicide,” Terezi said, somewhat breathlessly. “Yes, I know.” 

He laughed again, unbothered by her impetuous interruption. “That’s right! You’re well-read, for a wriggler.”

“Yes,” she repeated, absently. “I know.” 

She focused all her attention on the speedlift. That there were seven people in there — seven real trolls — who had not only the intent, but the _capability_ to kill the Empress — fascinated her. She was proximate to some of the worst trolls in the galaxy. It got her a little flustered. 

“Is it safe to have them here?” She cast a glance around. “There are a lot of kids nearby.”

The legislacerator snorted. “I’d like to see ‘em try anything. I _really_ would.” He patted his sheath. “Refusal to comply with jury sentencing authorizes —”

“—the use of deadly force by any and all Alternian subjects in the event that they find themselves capable of completing the jury’s sentence. So you’d kill them yourselves?”

His upper lip curled back to reveal a set of razor-sharp, smooth incisors, tapered to points that were too fine to be natural. “With extreme prejudice.” 

“Neat,” she breathed.

He thumped her on the back. “It’s _very_ neat. But they’re too smart for that.” He tapped his temple knowingly. “Least with the noose there’s half a chance you’ll die quickly. Painlessly. Not so with the sword.” He adjusted the sheath again, conspicuously. “And none of us here have got the incentive to be kind. Way I see it — they forfeited their right to mercy when they threatened the Empire. Killing ‘em quickly is too good for their like.” 

“The most effective method of torture is an ineffective one,” Terezi chirped, and he patted her back again.

“Excellent. You’re a natural.” 

She puffed up with pride. “Just studious, Counselor.” 

“That’ll take you a long way, once you get to the Bar. And a mind like yours, you’ll get to the Bar.” He turned and made an intricate hand gesture to one of the other legislacerators, who nodded and started unlocking the speedlift.

“I’m Marduk,” said the legislacerator, extending his hand. “How about you?”

“Terezi Pyrope,” she said, shaking it. 

“Nice to meet you, Pyrope.” 

“Likewise, Counselor.”

Another legislacerator opened the speedlift. “Go stand by the lever,” he ordered Terezi.

She did. The traitors filed out, single-file, kept in order by generous application of the legislacerators’ swords. The first out was a scraggly-looking oliveblood, of average height and a wide build, ransacked by malnutrition. The second, a scruffy rustblood, with one horn that was snapped at the root; the third, fourth, and fifth, all bony yellowbloods whose shaven heads were encased by bulky steel headsets. One of them had a twitch. All wore either repurposed burlap sacks or nothing more than loincloths. Their bones pressed out against skin as if trying to escape. 

There was a break in the line after prisoner number five, but one of the legislacerators jumped up on the entrance to the speedlift and barked something at its inhabitants. Six and seven descended from the cage gracefully — Terezi blinked, looked again — a pair of well-dressed violetbloods. One wore a simple black dress, cinched tastefully around her waist; the other wore a military uniform, her hair pulled back in a neat bun. Both of them looked well-fed and hygienic.

“Lord Marduk,” Terezi said, feeling distant. “Are they —”

He sighed. “Highbloods. Had a couple of plants on the jury, I’m sure of it.” He thumbed his nose at her. “That’s privilege, isn’t it, right there — even walking to the noose in luxury. It’s a miracle they didn’t have a separate set of gallows commissioned.” He snorted in disgust. “First rule of the Bar: blood color doesn’t disappear in the courtblock.” 

“Noted.”

He clapped his hands, eliciting a flinch from the jadeblood. “Hurry,” he barked. “Some of us have plans for later today.”

The rustblood stumbled on the stairs up to the platform. Marduk dealt him a whack to the shin with his sheathed sword. “Steady on,” he warned. The rustblood nodded, kept walking, chin low and eyes averted.

“ _Why_ ,” Terezi began, and took a moment to reform her curiosity into something more composed. “Why would a pair of highbloods — of all people — join a coup?”

“I don’t know. You can ask ‘em.” He prodded the highblood in uniform with the tip of his sword. “Why’d you do it, eh?”

The troll’s lips thinned and she lifted her chin, imperious. 

Marduk sighed. Almost faster than Terezi could track, he struck the violetblood upside the head, sending her stumbling.

“You can take a highblood out of court,” he told Terezi, his mild, informative tone starkly at odds with the brutality of his actions, “but you can’t take the court out of a highblood. You,” he added, to the prisoner, “should bring yourself to answer the question. Promptly, if it isn’t too terrible an inconvenience.” 

The troll bared her teeth in a savage smile. “Or _what_ ,” she said, savoring each syllable. “You’ll _cull_ me?”

Marduk shrugged, and drew his sword with casual efficiency.

The violetblood’s eyes skittered along the length of the blade and then she turned to Terezi. “You’re a little young to be on the Bar,” she said. “Are they accepting wrigglers, now?”

“No.”

“Couldn’t tell, from the look of you. Wouldn’t put it past them, age of admissions seems to shrink every sweep.” She shook her head. “I don’t take questions from neonate clerks.”

“As you like it,” said Marduk, and pointed to the last noose, dangling at the end of the row.

The highblood kept her chin up as she walked to her spot. A legislacerator at the end of the platform drew up a stool for her to stand on and fitted the noose carefully around her chin, pulling the knot tight. They flashed Marduk a thumbs-up and stepped back, arms folded.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said, and strode over to the hangtroll’s station. 

Terezi watched the prisoners. All of them were trembling, except the highblood — she lifted her head and watched the horizon with clear, triumphant eyes. One would think she was atop a hoofbeast in a victory march, not a gallows stool in her last living moments.

A sizable crowd had gathered. A plethora of hungry yellow eyes feasted on the soon-to-be-dead, devouring every element of their personages and snickering at the more humiliating ones.

The hangtroll’s hand closed around the lever.

The violetblood turned and looked at Terezi. For a moment, she glared, and Terezi was petrified by the vitriol in the highblood’s stare; but then her face softened, in something like sympathy.Not quite forgiveness. Not quite regret.

_“Hang,”_ Marduk cried, and the deck collapsed from under the convicts.

It was a clean death for five of seven prisoners. Their necks snapped with clear, sharp noises, and their bodies slumped in the rope’s embrace. For two of seven — the jadeblood and one of the yellowbloods with a headset — their necks remained intact, and they struggled in midair for a good four minutes, feet thrashing desperately for purchase against a ground that was not there. At length, their kicking grew weak, and their eyes rolled back in their head. The yellowblood twitched once more. Then seven were dead.

The legislacerators stepped out and cut the ropes that suspended the bodies with swift strokes. The bodies fell to the ground beneath the platform, upon which the observing children swarmed the traitors and began scavenging what they could from the corpses.

A hand on Terezi’s shoulder elicited a hastily stifled yelp. Marduk chuckled.

“First execution?”

“Yes,” she says. Belatedly aware that she had managed little more than a whisper, she repeated herself, louder.

“Enjoyable?”

She almost swallowed her tongue.

“Course,” she mumbled. “It was — lovely. Thank you, Counselor.” She shook her head, fixed a beam on her face. “Thank you for the privilege of standing with you, Counselor.” 

“I’ll be proud to have given you your first turn on the platform, if you end up running one yourself.” He gave her a last thump on the shoulder and turned away. “Well met, Ms. Pyrope.” 

“Well met, Lord Marduk. May the Empress ignore you.” 

“And you.”

She remained on the platform until the legislacerators started to dissemble it, at which point she stumbled down on uneven legs. The crowd had mostly dispersed by that point; all that remained was the bodies, and what little remained of them. Some trolls had taken locks of hair, fingernails, shoes, anything that could be used as a souvenir of the occasion. One had wrenched off a piece of a yellowblood’s headset. Terezi grimaced. Animals, the lot of them.

She approached the uniformed violetblood. The corpse did not look peaceful in death. It looked grotesque and unshapely, a bad sculptor’s imitation of what an Alternian should be, her neck bending in places the Alternian spine was not meant to bend, a deep violet tinge suffusing areas where blood clots burst and rushed to the surface. She stank of sweat and blood and methane. Her eyes turned, unseeing, to the stars.

Something silver glittered around her neck.

Terezi reached forward and lifted the chain from underneath the uniform. To her understanding, criminals weren’t permitted to keep jewelry or unnecessary adornments on their person at executions; another example of highblood privilege, she presumed.

The chain held a pendant: two interlocking curls, furnished from silver, small enough to hide under even the thinnest blouse. Terezi wouldn’t have noticed it herself, had it not been dislodged by the dead troll’s fall. It couldn’t have been meant for display, then, not like normal jewelry was; it must have had some significance to the dead troll, for her to die with it, but Terezi had never seen the insignia before.

Casting a glance at the remaining legislacerators, Terezi snapped the chain and pocketed the pendant.

 

* * *

 

She burned that silver, Terezi now remembers. When she found out what it meant, what it could spell for her career if anyone found it on her. She melted it to a silver blob and then flushed it down the loadgaper, and then almost overdosed on sopor because she couldn’t sleep for fear that legislacerators would come and take her in the night.

Now, safe in her exemption from the statute on possession, she curls her fingers around the necklace and rips it from the dead mercenary’s neck.

“What’s that?” Vriska appears at her shoulder, nosy. Terezi steps away from her.

“We’re going back to the ship.”

“What? Why?” She’s sour. Confused. Suddenly, Terezi’s nose is twice as sharp as she wants it to be; she can read Vriska’s mutating scent with too much clarity and Terezi really wants to not smell anything right now _,_ she wants the meticulously sterilized scent-blindness of her quarters, she wants not to be charged with mounting a defense for the most infamous criminal alive, she wants not to have nine trolls’ blood on her hands because the Church won’t leave her alone and she wants the Magistragedy to stop ignoring her please for answers and she wants _someone to tell her what the fuck is going on._

Ah, Terezi thinks, distantly. This is the part where she panics. It’s taken long enough.

“Pyrope! _Hey_ , c’mon —”

“We’re going,” she says, her voice floating into her auriculars as if played by a recorder through three layers of cotton.

Vriska’s hand lands on her shoulder, pinching too tight. Terezi shrugs it off.

“Don’t,” she begins, but can’t finish the sentence to her satisfaction. She shakes her head. The cotton clears. “Just — don’t.” 

She steps over the bodies to leave the block. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Do you wonder where the self resides_  
>  _Is it in your head or between your sides_  
>  _And who will be the one who will decide_  
>  _Its true location_  
>  —Troll Andrew Bird, _Darkmatter_


	5. Gifts from the Handmaid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > “Lusus naturae _pose a quandary as regards troll development. While supposedly caretakers and protectors for the duration a wriggler’s adolescence, the size of some lusii, being either too small or simply too large to care for the average troll child, would make this role difficult. Furthermore, the lusus has no impetus to care_ well _for the child, nor can external standards of care be imposed; what kind of child services agency, for example, is capable or willing to chastise a two-story carnivorous arachnid?”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

It rains for a week.

Terezi leaves infrequently. On her husktop sit no less than three drafted reports of her encounter with the mercenaries. Only one mentions the Sufferite among them. The other two, poorly constructed and scattered with typos, resemble not so much an experienced legislacerator’s casualty report as they do a neophyte’s desperate cover-up of their own error. This similarity, of course, means nothing. Terezi has done nothing wrong. This doesn’t lend her any relief in the daytime, lying on her back in the sopor, contemplating her block’s ceiling and turning the Sign over in her hands.

She’s taken to wearing the damn thing. It’s a terrible decision. Permitted as they are to carry the Sign as a piece of evidence, _nobody,_ bar none, is allowed to bear the Sign as an article of clothing. It is highest heresy. It is a culling offense. It is libel, slander, and implicit treason to whisper its owner’s name — and Terezi carries it against her collarbone for seven days and seven nights, perpetually conscious of its cool pressure.

When she does sleep, it is not pleasant.

_Their necks snap with clean, sharp noises —_

She ups her sopor dosage. This is a bad idea.

_Her fins bleed after death, violet on silver —_

One evening, her eyes open, but she cannot move. Her body remains heavy at the bottom of the recuperacoon as a vivid hallucination of the violetblood crawls atop her, dipping her claws into the slime with unnaturally long fingers, head dangling loosely from her shoulders. 

_The corpse does not look peaceful in death — nothing, no one does —_

Terezi does not scream. Her throat, too, is paralyzed.

She sleeps dry, for a few days after that. It turns her skin to a patchwork quilt of callouses and sandpaper-rough joints, and her eyes burn even more than usual, but she wakes up when she’s supposed to and she hardly dreams at all. When she returns to the recuperacoon at the furious insistence of the ship’s mediculler, she dilutes the sopor almost to water, and sets her alarm for various points throughout the day, so as to avoid cycling into dream-sleep. She feels awful, but a strong pot of bitter bean fluid resolves most of her problems, so on the whole she considers it a successful endeavor.

Vriska hasn’t left the ship at all, to Terezi’s surprise. When she’s not wrist-deep in machinery, she’s on the bridge, yelling at someone to do something faster, better, more efficiently. To Terezi’s even greater surprise, it seems to work. Trolls hustle to do things when she’s in the block, walk with a spring in their step when there’s a sharp word rolling off the captain’s tongue. Vriska must know this, because whenever there’s an important task going on, she plants herself in the corner of the block and barks orders until it’s done.

The ship is almost finished. The question of where they’re going next has been posed at several junctions, which Terezi has fielded with unflagging procrastination. She tosses out random planets, offhanded suggestions, nothing that anyone would take seriously, in an attempt to buy herself more time. She doesn’t know where they’re going. There is nowhere in the galaxy, no piece of evidence that she could hunt down, which would prove Vriska Serket’s innocence. It can’t be done. Their only concrete destination is the heretofore unannounced location of Vriska’s trial, and Terezi would sooner drive her ship towards the Battleship Condescension than _that._

She rises on the eighth night and has hardly dressed when she gets a notification of someone requesting access to her quarters.

Presuming it’s Vriska, she lets them wait while she takes her sweet time getting ready. Not that it takes more than a minute or two at her most painstaking; her horns aren’t long enough to merit filing, nor are a legislacerator’s daily uniforms arduous to equip. She comes to the door without her weapon.

Aradia Megido stands her her doorway, trim and presentable in her black First Mate’s jacket. Her hair is pulled back, neat, and she wears rouge lipstick. Not a fashionable choice, but a becoming one. Terezi’s always been a sucker for crimson shades, anyway.

“Evening, Counselor,” she says politely. “Would you take a walk with me?”

Terezi takes a moment to process the request.

“Of course,” she says, although her words belie her confidence, and she goes to get her sword.

Aradia’s course takes them around to the left wing of the ship, making the occasional remark on some part of the reconstruction process going ahead or behind schedule. Terezi does her best to reply intelligently. She doesn’t always make the mark. What happens onboard her ship, on a technical, represents a mystery to her, a situation she had always been satisfied with — before she became one of a handful alive with a coherent memory of what the ship was supposed to look like when operational. So Aradia’s commentary sails over her head, for the most part.

Not until Aradia says, “The Captain has been lingering in the engine room lately,” does Terezi understand what she wants.

“I’ll tell her to leave your crew alone. She thinks she’s helping, I don’t think she means harm —”

“What? No. No, I don’t object to Captain Serket interacting with her officers.” Aradia pauses in front of a window and watches the workers outside fuse a panel over the hull’s rip there, sparks leaping. “I wondered if you two had had a falling out.”

Terezi blinks. “Pardon?”

“A falling out. I’d say ‘lovers’ quarrel,’ but I don’t want to presume. Please tell me if I’m overstepping.”

“You are.”

“Oh. I’m —”

“It’s fine,” Terezi says, swatting the apology away. “I don’t care. There’s nothing interesting to know, anyway. She and I aren’t — nothing has happened.” That’s a lie. They haven’t spoken about what happened with the mercenaries, and theoretically, she knows they should, but practically, her gut crafts a persuasive rebuttal consisting of nausea and apprehension every time she considers it. 

Aradia tilts her head. “So you two don’t . . .”

“Do you _really_ care about overstepping?”

She grins. “No, not really.”

“Right.” Terezi leans against the wall and savors the scent of the hot sparks leaping from the worker’s firespitter. “I don’t know what you were going to suggest that we ‘don’t’ do, but I can confirm that we don’t do it. I’m her legislacerator. She’s my client.”

“‘Client’ isn’t the term most legislacerators use.”

“It’s situationally appropriate.”

“Interesting.” Aradia clasps her hands behind her back when she stands. Terezi wonders if it’s a side effect of past military service or a behavior learned under a strict gamblignant captain. Either way, it gives her the impression that she’s talking to a member of the Condesce’s Finest, and it unnerves her.

“Just out of curiosity,” Terezi says, “what made you think we did what we apparently don’t?”

Aradia’s brows knit. “I beg your pardon?”

“Why did you think _I_ had anything to do with her getting clingy with the ship’s bowels?”

Her expression clears immediately. “Ah. It was presumptuous of me, I guess, but you two read —” She shakes her head wryly. “You two read as _something._ Black, pale, some awfully unhealthy kind of ash — flushed — I’m not a great quadrant reader, I thought I was just obtuse.”

“Flushed!” Terezi cackles. “What in the Handmaid’s name made you think _that?”_

Aradia blushes. “Not every red couple is mutually affectionate,” she argues. “I’m certainly not going to judge a pair of prospective employers on their matespritship, am I?”

“I put her in a wrist lock!”

“It’s far from the most risqué thing I’ve ever seen a troll do to their matesprit in public,” Aradia sniffs, and it sets Terezi off into another round of shrieking guffaws.

“Wow,” she says, catching her breath. “No offense, Ms. Megido, but you really do suck at reading quadrants.”

“Clearly.” Aradia shrugs and keeps walking. “I thought it was worth a discreet inquiry. The First Mate usually falls responsible for mediating the captain’s romantic blunders.”

Terezi pauses, places a hand over her chest. “Ms. Raspberry! Have I mishandled an ashen solicitation?”

Aradia turns red as a heretic. “ _No_.”

Terezi snickers. “Yeah, I know.”

“You’re very cruel, you know, when you want to be.”

“Arguably, but you haven’t seen it,” Terezi says, and keeps pace with Aradia. They make a loop around the east wing and head towards the crew’s lounge, where there are fewer repairs, and consequently, less noise. The rain has started again. It rattles, distant, against the _Pyrexia’s_ roof.

“Do you really hear dead people?”

“Why would I lie?”

“To scare us. Serket, specifically. I don’t know who ‘Tavros Nitram’ is, but you had her frozen solid.” Terezi nudges her with an elbow. “Well done, by the way. It was a fantastic piece of terrorizing.”

“I was earnestly curious. I’m not lying — you can ask me something, if you want.” She points at the window as they pass it. “There’s an old crew member of yours, just there. Newly dead, he’s louder than most.”

Terezi gives the window a wide berth. “What’s his name?”

Aradia pauses, and smiles slightly. “Glinke.” 

“I never hired any Glinke.”

“He was a maintenance officer, you wouldn’t have known him.” She waves goodbye to the window and continues walking. “To answer your question — Tavros Nitram was one of Vriska’s old FLARP rivals.”

“And she killed him.”

“She told you?”

“No, but she wouldn’t have almost pissed herself at the name if he were the victim of an unfortunate accident. What happened?”

Aradia nibbles her lip. “I’m not sure it’s my prerogative to say.”

“I outrank Vriska, if that’s your issue.”

“Sure, but — well.” She looks away, not that it makes much of a difference to Terezi.“ _He_ doesn’t like talking about it.”

Terezi changes tac. “When did you first start hearing ghosts, First Mate?”

Aradia perks up. “Six sweeps, somewhere around there. At first they were just the souls of animals, tiny little things. They didn’t have much to say. But then I started playing FLARP, and they were all . . . loud. Someone would die and then I’d hear them talking, which I took as a sign I was going crazy, but. Eventually, I started hearing voices I’d never heard while alive, voices of trolls I’d seen on the newsfeeds. I thought it was _great.”_ Her tone is wistful. “I’d always wanted to be an abhorristorian, and here I was — with a schoolfeed from the afterlife.”

“How’d you end up here, if you were aiming for ‘abhorristorian’?”

She shrugs. “Conscription put me in the military. There are only so many scholar positions, and they weren’t keen on putting a short-lived rustblood in any of them.”

“You’re not in the military now,” Terezi observes.

“I ran away after half a sweep. I wasn’t interested in becoming a war machine. Especially not with the trolls I’d killed hanging around in my head.” Aradia taps her auricular. “Ended up on a gamblignant vessel, they pad their ranks with runaways and deserters every sweep. If you work hard and keep your head down, they mind their own business.”

“And now you’re back working for the government.”

“I’m working for you,” Aradia corrects, not unkindly.

“I’m an official of the government. Negligible semantic difference.” 

“An official making deals with pirates and thieves. Your circumstances are unorthodox. Nor do I think you’re going to reenlist me at the first opportunity.”

Terezi grins. “Why not? I could be a plant, waiting to rope you back into service.”

Aradia smiles, guileless. “I guess I just trust you, Counselor.”

“A terrible idea! You’ll end up dead with an attitude like that.”

“I’m not dead yet, am I?”

“A horrific fallacy. Every troll who ever died was, prior to the moment of their death, ‘not dead yet.’”

She laughs. “All right, Counselor. I’ll take that into consideration.”

 

* * *

 

Terezi finds Vriska wedged between the auxiliary cannon fuel supply tank and the floor, sound asleep. She clenches a wrench in her fist and her back is curled against the machine, like a wriggler against a lusus’ warm abdomen. She looks younger. Her jacket is gone, again, taking with it the extra breadth and swagger it lends her, peeling away the sea-worn shell of bloodstained fabric. Her hair is pulled away from her face, putting on display the softer curves of her jawbone, the long curve of her eyelashes. She could be modeling for a pale porno, all helpless and defensive, just _begging_ to be papped into consciousness.

She’s also going to wake up with an ache in her neck the size of a planet, scrunched up like that.

Terezi sighs, slides her cane through her belt, and tugs Vriska out by the armpits.

The auxiliary cannon fuel supply tanks aren’t that far from her quarters. Dragging Vriska there makes it feel like the opposite side of the ship. She drops her no less than twice, neither of which wake her up. She snores when she sleeps. Terezi does her best to find it annoying. She is unsuccessful.

She wrestles her through the door to her entertaining block and tosses her on one of the reclining cushioned platforms. Vriska slumps spread-eagle there, still as the dead, distinguished from her unanimated cousins only by the faint rasp of breath at the back of her throat. Terezi sits down opposite her in an armchair and picks up her husktop. 

She doesn’t know what she’s doing.

This is the first time the thought registers. It’s flitted across her consciousness before, but always at comfortable range, where she could pretend to ignore it; now it settles heavy on her shoulders, demanding answers, scraping at the shell of her thinkpan. The case brief has perhaps three words on it, in total.

**CHARGES FACED BY THE ACCUSED: Affray. Assault. Assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Assault with intent to resist arrest. Attempted murder. Battery.**

She doesn’t want Vriska Serket to die. This is a perverse and unorthodox desire to have, especially for one in her position.

**Blackmail. Blasphemous libel. Body snatching. Bomb threat. Breach of the peace, first, second, third degrees.**

A legislacerator does not harbor desires with regards to her subject. She understands the defendant, first and foremost, as a collection of charges, which are to be evaluated and rewarded as she prefers. The defendant is not a troll, not to the legislacerator, not to the jury, not to anyone whose opinion will be relevant to the defendant’s fate. Not a person.

Vriska Serket, whatever else could be said of her, is a _person._

She’s a person that Terezi Pyrope might like, a bit.

Terrible. Terrible, terrible thought. Terezi types out a few more sentences in the case brief to pay penance for thinking it.

**Burglary. Calunnia. Capital murder. Cheating. Consp1r4cy to d3fra4d—**

Terezi shuts the husktop with unnecessary force and sets it aside. She watches Vriska’s thorax rise and fall. This continues for an indefinite amount of time; Terezi doesn’t keep track.

The seagrift wakes up with a grunt, spasming against the reclining platform. Dry sleep offers unpleasant awakenings. Terezi doesn’t envy her the sensation.

“ _Where_ the — oh.” Vriska pushes herself up on one elbow and nods, still bleary. “Uh. Thanks, there, Counselor.”

“Yes, well,” Terezi says, busying herself with her wristtop, “if you slept wrong on your neck, you’d never shut up about it.”

“Careful, there, you almost seemed sympathetic.”

“Slander. Take it back, you cur.”

“Never.” Vriska yawns, a brief flash of dizzyingly sharp teeth. “So this is your place, huh?”

“My entertaining block, yes.”

“Ooooooooh, fancy-ass government employee, you have an ‘entertaining block’ —”

“Would you rather sleep in the engine room? It sounds like you’d rather sleep in the engine room.” 

“Did you hear me complaining? I’m not complaining.” Vriska flops over on her stomach. “I’m _marveling._ I think I’m getting under your dermis.” 

“Like a narcoleptic parasite,” Terezi coos. Vriska flips her off.

Terezi watches her with something approaching fondness constricting her bloodpusher. The Sign weighs on her neck, invisible, but heavy. That no one has noticed it seems a small miracle.

“Serket.”

“Yes’m.”

“What do you know about the cult of the Sufferer?”

Vriska rolls over, huffs, fixes her eyes on the ceiling. “Nothing.”

“Okay, right, your obedience to the Empress’ law is duly noted. Now what do you _actually_ know about the cult of the Sufferer?”

She groans. “Like, nothing. Don’t tell me that’s one of my charges.”

“No. It’s one of the few things you _haven’t_ done. I’m curious, that’s all.” Terezi reaches for the chain around her neck, fiddles with it. “Have you noted an upsurge in his followers, lately?”

“Never sailed with one, to my knowledge. The only Sufferite I ever met was an old bartender who lived on a backwater planet circling a black hole, and he was two hard puffs of wind from keeling over dead.” Vriska frowns. “You have something to tell me, Counselor?” Her expression lightens; she waggles her eyebrows. “Do _you_ wear the silver?”

“Of course not.” Terezi pulls her hand away from her neck. “That’s heresy.” 

“Yeah, well, so’s talking about it.” Vriska, apparently unbothered by her thought crimes, rolls over to get more comfortable. A moment passes.

“Word before blood,” Terezi says quietly. “I looked it up.”

Vriska laughs, but it lacks venom. “You can’t learn the ways of the seagrift’s sky off a husktop, Counselor.”

“No, but you can learn them from hanging around a seagrift.” Terezi examines her hands. “Word before blood. ‘ _Juramento prae vulnus.’_ More literally, ‘Oath before wound.’”

“How are you on declensions?”

Terezi ignores her. “An unspoken bylaw of the sky,” she says. “Death before treachery. Loyalty, the supreme rule of piracy. The most precious currency.”

Vriska says nothing.

“Curiously,” Terezi continues, “there is a similar phrase among legislacerators.”

Vriska’s eyebrows climb. “Really.”

Terezi opens the door. 

“ _Proditor pendeat cum prodiderat_ ,” she says. “‘Traitors hang with the betrayed.’”

Vriska whistles. “Hardasses, you lot.”

“Had you not noticed?”

“I mean, Jesus. Wouldn’t you guys _like_ rats? Wouldn’t you wanna reward ‘em, give incentives?”

“It’s an implicit confession of guilt to report illegal activities that one has shared with another,” Terezi explains. “The law does not use a spoils system.”

“Kind of comforting, I guess.”

“I hoped it would be.” Terezi fiddles with her cane’s head. “The law is not — unjust, Vriska. Only its executors are. And there are more than just bad executors.”

She shakes her head. “The law _is_ its executors, asshole. There aren’t rules without policemen. An unenforced standard is a suggestion.”

“Do you think I’m a bad person?”

The question gives her pause. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what I said. Do you think I’m a bad person?”

“No.” Vriska tilts her head. “I think you’re misguided about some shit, and you’ve done some questionable things, but you’re not a bad person.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not selfish.”

“You think ‘selfish’ is the lone qualifier for evil?” Terezi rises and holds her cane behind her back, professional, the embodiment of legislacerative posture. “What if the Condesce — hailed be her name — did all she does in the purest interests? Could you, indeed, even verify _anyone’s_ intent in doing things?”

Vriska hesitates. It’s all Terezi needs.

“What if I _am_ selfish,” she says. “Is a selfish saint still a saint?”

“No.”

“A simplistic view of morality, Captain. Does the savior’s intent matter to the saved?”

“Yes.”

“Really? Always?”

“Yes.”

Terezi grinds her teeth. “You saved my life,” she said. “Back at Tethys. Did you do it because you would regret my death?”

Vriska shifts uncomfortably. “Not exactly.”

“Did you do it out of self-interest alone?”

“I dunno.”

“ _There.”_ Terezi cracks her cane on the floor. “Motives are unknowable and, therefore, irrelevant. Choices are your reckoning, and by your choices you will be judged.”

Vriska tosses one of her dice in the air and catches it. Repeats. “I’m shit outta luck, then,” she says, and it lilts like a joke on her tongue, but it trembles like a prayer.

Terezi pauses. As a reply formulates in her thinkpan, her wristtop buzzes.

C0UNSEL0R, writes Aradia, her quirk erratic with urgency. PR0BLEM ON THE LOADING DECK.

 

* * *

 

Vriska comes barging into the loading area with her guns drawn, looking for all the world like she’s ready to face a threshecutioner squad. Terezi enters behind her at a more moderate pace, weapon away, trying to restrain her amusement.

Aradia and a handful of her crew crouched in the bay. The doors were sealed and double-locked, humming, straining under the storm’s duress, and the block is lit with the emergency green glowsticks tucked behind the automatic fluorescents. It casts the trolls in pale pallor, emanates the sour-lemon curdle of anxiety. Terezi’s bloodpusher skips a few pumps and kicks into high gear.

“What’s going on _now?”_

Aradia’s drawn her specibus — a long, curling whip, with a barbed metal tip at the end. A damn near impossible specibus, wielded only by people who know exactly what they’re doing with it; Terezi makes a mental note to be impressed later. 

“Captain,” she says, “Counselor.” Her breathing comes labored. “Thank you for coming. Xixzek, show them what you saw.”

A nub-horned troll with matted hair creeps forward, bearing a databook. His right auricular dribbles yellow blood, and a scratch trails down his left cheek. Members of his group are scuffed up similarly. Vriska inhales sharply; Terezi ignores her. 

She grabs the databook and licks the screen, pressing her tongue securely against all four corners, and then hands it to Vriska, who takes it gingerly with two fingers. It’s a picture taken of the landing bay from the _Pyrexia’s_ entrance: nine adult trolls, culled brutally, their bodies contorted into lettering. Blood smears the deck around the bodies. **HERETIC** , it reads.

“Gross,” Vriska says, and tosses the databook back to the yellowblood. He fumbles with the slick screen. “Buy a can of fucking paint.”

“You’re aware what that’s made of,” Aradia says, mildly concerned. Terezi silences them both with a lifted hand.

“Open the doors.”

“You’re fucking joking _,_ Counselor —”

Vriska pops the outspoken greenblood upside the head. “Does this look like a joking situation, bulgefuck? Show some respect.”

“Are they being opened? I’m blind, I can’t see them,” Terezi says, tense with ill-restrained irritation.

“They could come into the loading area, Counselor —”

“Are you _trolls_ , or aren’t you?” Vriska cocks one of her guns for emphasis. “Get out your specibi and _use_ them, you invertebrate shits!”

They look at Terezi for confirmation. She shrugs. “She’s your commanding officer,” she says.

A few draw their specibi. Aradia, reeking of consternation, thumbs the hatch and the doors slide open. Rain washes the block immediately, drenching all inside it. Port Imperial smells of wet steel and dirt, in the rain. The Ocean of Myr churns distantly in the bay.

“It’s a subjugglator.”

“No shit, I could’ve told you that. You think a normal person goes around making declarative art out of dead trolls?”

She sniffs again. Her stomach takes a sharp dive into her intestine.

“Who is it?”

“You’ve met,” she says, faintly.

Vriska swears for twenty straight seconds.

Gamzee Makara’s scent drenches the landing bay, lingering thick over the bodies. Attendants, probably, from their uniforms, or officers from neighboring ships. Most of them perfectly loyal Empire subjects. None given due process under the law. Their slaughter was for the sole purpose of drawing Terezi out of the ship, a blood overture, sheer provocation. He did it because he knew it would work. She presses the back of her hand over her mouth and turns her head away from the group. 

“Pyrope. Pyrope?” Vriska approaches. “You here?”

“Where else would I be?” She sidesteps the question of her mental stability with practiced agility.

“You need a minute?”

“No.” She strides out into the rain. “I have nine murders to investigate.”

“You — what the fuck. There’s a mass murderer out there, a _juggalo_ — oh, for God’s sake.” Vriska stomps out after her, boots sloshing on the pavement. “You’re going to get us killed.”

Aradia lingers back in the loading area, keeping the crew in line, watching them warily. “You could have stayed,” Terezi suggests. She has to shout to be heard over the rain.

“Yeah, and watch a highblood cultist pull your digestion noodles through your nasal canals? Fat chance.”

“But when will you get another opportunity?” She stoops by the bodies and pulls a piece of red chalk from her coat. “Move, you’re blocking my light.”

“ _What_ light? There’s no fucking moon!”

“And yet, somehow, you manage it. Come help me search this guy for an ID.”

“There’s a clown on the loose and you’re playing at —”

“I’m not playing. You seem to be slow to grasp the concept, but I am, in fact, a legislacerator, even when I’m not in the courtblock.” Terezi finishes her outline of the first body, composing half of the H. “These people need to be —”

A shadow flickers over the bodies, nigh invisible through the dark. Vriska notices it too late to move; Terezi inhales sharply and flings herself at Vriska, shoving them both aside. Gamzee’s club comes down with a _crack_ on the section of real estate recently vacated by Vriska’s head.

Terezi scrambles to her feet and draws her sword. He blocks out the light from the ship, the winding shadows of his horns stark against the ship’s dull green lamps, red eyes furiously incandescent in the gloom. He lumbers toward her like the Handmaid incarnate, a being of shadow, distinguishable only by his freakishly large silhouette.

“Hey, there,” he says, “MOST WICKED BITCHSIS.”

Vriska raises her gun. He snatches the firearm out of her hand and bends it in half.

“It was crazy hard, getting back from that lonesome space pod you done sent me to,” he slurs, “CRAZY FUCKIN’ HARD. I damn near didn’t make it, sis, DAMN NEAR DIDN’T MAKE IT.”

“Speaking of which,” Vriska interjects, “how _did_ you —”

He flings his club at her. She leaps out of the way, hair flying, clinging to her one remaining gun. 

“You — most _callous_ motherfucker — have some nerve,” he says. “You almost KILLED ME.”

“And that ‘almost’ will haunt us until we die,” Terezi says. “We shall endeavor to do better, this time.”

His eyes narrow. She denies him the chance to retort.

Her sword lunges for his kneecap. He darts out of the way, flaunting speed disproportionate to his size, and launches a volley of blows around her head and shoulders. He come at her, swift and acrobatic, made invisible by the storm. It’s hard to see and harder to track, and impossible to parry with her own weapon. She backpedals as fast as she can.

Gunfire shatters the air. A bullet lodges itself in Gamzee’s shin. The distraction gives Terezi an opportunity to escape his shadow and seize Vriska’s arm, hauling her across the landing bay.

“Where the fuck are you going?”

“Draw him away from the ship,” she shouts — “come on!”

They sprint across the slick permacrete. He pursues, just as she knew he would — even the unpredictable are predictable, sometimes — and she weaves in between the other docked ships to hide.

Vriska turns and fires. The shots keep missing him, her aim made poor by conditions and ill-controlled rage. Her lips curl back with each wasted bullet, face contorting, and she fires faster, more recklessly — she’s going to throw away everything she has. 

Terezi wrenches Vriska behind the flank of a passenger cruiser and they slouch against the hull, breath coming fast and harsh. 

“We’re fucked,” Vriska snarls. “We’re so _fucked_ , I can’t get a damn _shot —”_

“Stop complaining and give me suggestions!”

“Like what? I don’t have time to roll my goddamn die! He’ll be on me before the Octet can settle!”

“Fine,” Terezi says. “You need time? I’ll get you time.” She sticks her head around the edge and watches Gamzee drag his club against the deck, lurching towards them. His leg dribbles grape sludge everywhere. He doesn’t seem to notice.

“Well, yeah, that and a shitload of luck!”

Terezi tips her head against the cool metal and sighs. The rain splatters over her nose and blurs scents until Vriska is a cobalt blur against a backdrop of miasmic viscera.

“Follow me,” she orders, and steps into Gamzee’s line of sight.

He perks up. “Hey there,” he croons, “hey there, little sister. There you are.”

“You’re not particularly hard to fool.” She braces herself. “ _You_ could lose a Sufferite in a locked room.”

“Aw, bitchsis, you don’t need to abuse me like that, none. You ain’t got many minutes left in you, you wanna spend them spewin’ garbage? You want your LAST MOTHERFUCKING WORDS to be nothin’ but HERETICAL WHACK?”

“My last words,” Terezi says, drawing up to her full height, “are going to be —”

One of Vriska’s bullets whizzes past Gamzee’s head, clipping off a piece of horn. He bellows and flings a club at her. It dents the ship behind her.

“Goddammit,” Terezi breathes. “If you’re going to shoot him, shoot _straight!”_

“Wow, great note, here I was trying to give the motherfucker a haircut —”

“Shut up and reload!” She tackles him. It distracts him from pursuit of Vriska, at least, but aggravates him further. He peels her off his back and flings her to the side, sending her skidding seven or eight feet. She turns the movement into a roll and springs up, making another charge.

“You heretical shitbloods. YOU ATHEISTIC PRE-CORPSES. You don’t even know. YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE THE FULL FUCKING KNOWING OF YOUR ERRORS, lawbug, and YOU WILL DIE FOR THEM.”

“You talk a lot of shit,” Terezi declares, “for someone who hasn’t actually killed me yet!”

Vriska shoots again. It grazes Gamzee’s arm, spraying Terezi with dark purple blood that tastes nothing like it smells. 

The distraction opens him up for a cut on the shoulder, but he knocks her arm away when she makes the attempt. He doesn’t fight _normally,_ the bastard; he drops openings everywhere, attacks without intent or strategy, but he always recovers. Illogically, infuriatingly, he is always exactly where he needs to be to survive a devastating attack. She can’t read him, can’t tell what he’s going to do next. This has always been her advantage, and it’s gone.

Another shot splashes the ground at Gamzee’s feet. Vriska snarls; Terezi skids to avoid taking a bullet.

“Can you or can you not aim a firearm, Serket?”

“It’s not easy when you’re scampering all over the place! I might hit _you!”_

His arm whips back and almost catches Terezi in the eye. She sways out of the way and flicks out her blade, slitting open a vein in his wrist. While she’s off balance from the thrust, his leg sweeps under her ankles and almost knocks her over. She catches herself at the last moment, but her defense drops.

There’s no way to beat someone without strategy. They can’t be predicted, they can’t be bet on, they can’t be planned around —

“Die,” she says.

“Sweet iconoclast, YOUR TONGUE’S GETTING GRACELESS —” 

An idea imprints itself in her mind’s eye like lightning exploding on a storm-black sky. 

“Die!”

Vriska understands. She draws the Octet from her pocket, rattling the weapon between cupped palms.

Gamzee turns, hunching, his shoulders curling as he prepares to backhand her.

Terezi drops her sword and launches herself onto his shoulders, grabbing his head between her hands. 

He stumbles. Surprise paralyzes him for a fraction of a second. Terezi drives her thumbs into his eyes. 

The following howl swallows the sound of Vriska casting her die, face tight with concentration. The die coruscate, pulsing with blistering white energy, and their light shatters on the rain around them like diamond shards. Gamzee drops Terezi, and she launches herself out of range, clapping a hand over her nose. Cold, bleach-smelling white blossoms over the platform with eye-watering intensity.

A blade sprouts from Vriska’s hand, easily half Terezi’s height in length, and as broad as the palm of her hand. It moves seemingly of its own accord, using Vriska’s hand as a conduit for its own path — a neat, fluid arc into Gamzee’s neck, where it cuts through skin, muscle, bone. It carves off his head without resistance.

The body topples and the head rolls. 

The light fades, and the sword dissipates into wisps of white smoke. The die clatter to the deck, dull blue, unremarkable.

“Decollating Dagger,” Vriska mumbles. “Lucky break.”

Terezi rubs her neck. “The Fluorite Octet,” she says. “Mindfang’s. You weren’t lying.”

“Funny how that works.” Vriska scoops up the die and shoves them into her pocket. “I don’t lie nearly as much as people think I do.”

“You’ll forgive me for being skeptical.” Terezi lifts herself onto her knees. Her legs shake violently, cold and adrenaline injecting ice into her blood. 

“Yeah, I — sure. Yeah.” Vriska giggles. Terezi decides that they’re both probably in shock, although, being in shock, it fails to concern her.

“We’re alive,” she remarks. It sounds miraculous on her tongue. She says it again.

“You’re right. You’re fucking right. You’re _damn_ right. You — and then I —” Vriska staggers to her feet and claps Terezi on the back. Her claws dig into Terezi’s shoulder. “And then _you —”_

“I know. I was there.”

“Ha!” Vriska shrieks with laughter. “You fucking _were!_ You were, oh my God, we’re not fucking dead —”

“Despite all odds.”

“Despite all the odds, that’s for damn sure — we killed a fucking _subjugglator!_ Look at that shit! Look at that corpse, I’d like to see any priest in the goddamn Empire bring _that_ back to life —”

“Don’t tempt the universe.”

“Nah, you’re right, you’re right. Think I’ve used up all my luck for the evening, anyway, that roll’s one of the better ones I’ve got — what are you doing?”

Terezi, gripping her cane, has begun to amble off the landing bay.

“Hey!” Vriska trots after her, bobbing at her shoulder persistently. “Uh, I don’t think we can just _leave_ a juggalo corpse out here — I mean, like, cleaning drones are pretty good at not giving a fuck, but highblood murder is also kind of a big deal, so I’d stuff that fucker in a fridge or something until we can toss him into the nearest black hole —”

“Aradia,” Terezi calls.

Aradia strides out from the _Pyrexia’s_ loading dock, her whip poised at the ready. “Counselor,” she says. Her reaction to the dead body is masked by the storm, but her spine turns rigid, which suggests that her personal experiences with the Church and its representatives have been infrequent.

“Please take this exquisitely decapitated asshole into the brig and stuff him under the most foul-smelling engine available. And tell that one with the big horns to stop gaping, it can’t be the first time he’s seen a dead troll.”

“Of course, Counselor, but — where are you two going?”

Vriska eyes Terezi curiously.

“I don’t know about you,” Terezi announces, “but I just killed my ex-kismesis and almost died doing it, several times, in succession. That I am alive right now delights me to no end, and I intend to continue savoring my perseverance over a hard drink.” She bows to Aradia. “Good night, Officer.”

She marches past the crew and boards her ship. 

Vriska, after some brief dithering, follows her.

“Do you mind if I —” She shoves her hands in her pockets, failing a valiant attempt to seem nonchalant. “I mean, the crew’s all boring as hell. If you’d prefer your privacy, I guess that’s fair.”

Terezi considers, for a moment, refusing her, and pretending that she desperately does not want to be alone.

“Come on, then,” she says, and Vriska’s scent sharpens into pungent excitement.

“Good form, Pyrope. It’s bad luck to drink alone, anyway.” Vriska drapes an arm over Terezi’s shoulder. Terezi has neither the energy nor impetus to remove it.

 

* * *

 

Vriska Serket does not get drunk easily.

Seven glasses into the evening, Terezi muses that deciding to drink immediately after a disturbing event was not an example of stellar judgment. Vriska doesn’t seem to share the reservation.

Sometime after the third, she invited herself onto Terezi’s section of the reclining platform, babbling into Terezi’s ear. She doesn’t seem bothered by Terezi’s failure to participate in her conversation; instead, she pours forth dozens of anecdotes, loudly delivered, about battles past and adventures had while captain of the _Vagrant._ About times spent with other legislacerators, how she thwarted them, how she earned some of the charges on her rap sheet. The information jumbles around in Terezi’s brain, sketching an outline of Vriska’s past far more lively — and sympathetic — than that illustrated by casebooks and trial records. She’s a loud drunk, and a talkative one, but Terezi is neither, so they balance each other out.

After recounting a lively experience with three alien musclebeasts and a psionic crewmate, Vriska leans over and drapes herself on Terezi’s side. Her breath rolls hot over Terezi’s face. If Terezi weren’t well past the point of deliberate movement, it would have bothered her. Probably.

“You coulda killed me,” Vriska says breathlessly, “you coulda let me been killed, Pyrope, no one woulda thought ill of you for it — you _stuck_ _around,_ you took that bastard the _fuck_ out —”

“What are you talking about?”

“First time, out there — the club, and the — him. _Him._ You.”

Terezi presses herself back into the seat. Her bloodpusher rings in her auriculars. “It was more than a solo effort,” she points out.

“Not — yeah, well — you — still, though,” Vriska exclaims. “Goddamn. _Goddamn!_ You! _You!_ Terezi Pyrope! What the fuck! _You.”_ Her laugh bubbles up from her throat, hysterical, not an ounce of vitriol to it. Foreign sound. Pleasant sound. “What the fuck are you, you righteous little asshole?”

“I’m not sure I understand the question.”

“No! No! You don’t, even. You just sit there, like it’s — fuck — you don’t think nothing of it. Fucking hell. You’re a fucking genius, you know that, you’re the best fucking — _ha_ —” She collapses, her head lolling against Terezi’s shoulder.

“What is that, your seventh drink? Eighth?”

Vriska lifts it lazily. “Cheers,” she says. “Eight.”

She lapses into silence, staring at the ceiling. Terezi sniffs surreptitiously. Even the alcohol isn’t strong enough to mask the salt-steel-sky smell of Vriska, and in fact might enhance it. Terezi doesn’t enjoy strong scents, usually, but this seems to be an exception. 

She turns on the troll TV, flips through the channels. Voices blur and bleed together, knitting a comfortable layer of white noise and a pleasant, dull light. Terezi has never liked silence.

“I told you I wouldn’t let you die,” she says, at length, throat hoarse from underuse. Her cheeks feel warm. She wonders if Vriska will let her take it back.

“Yeah.” The light from the television throws odd shapes and shadows across Vriska’s face. “Didn’t believe you, though.”

“Why?”

“Thought you were lying.”

“That’s evident. Why did you think I was lying?”

Vriska settles her head onto Terezi’s shoulder. “Because of what you said,” she murmurs. Her voice dips unusually quiet, perhaps in mimicry of the television’s hum. “About oaths. And justice.”

“That was in the context of a conversation about my job, generally.”

“If you wanted justice,” Vriska says acidly, “you’d have let him kill me.”

“How many times do I have to explain this?”

“I know what you think! I know you think you’re serving justice by keeping me alive, or whatever. But I’ve earned the gallows. I don’t want them, obviously. Like! That would _suuuuuuuuck._ I’m not suicidal, or anything, you don’t have to — it’d be a goddamn waste, with the luck I’ve had, just to throw it away, give the universe a freebie. Not going that easy. But the evidence is there for it, though. I know the law, I know what I’m supposed to get. You’re supposed to want me dead. That’s the way this — justice — thing — works.” She scratches her neck. “Dunno why you don’t. That’s why you’re so — fuck.”

“I’m so fuck,” Terezi repeats dryly. “Eloquent.”

“Shut up! I’m trying!” Vriska swats her chest. “Anyway. I’m not gonna argue with you about what you should do, anymore, because — I mean. A. You’re a stubborn asshole and it’s like arguing with a brick wall. Goddamn. But. Second off. You’ve made your point. You actually believe that I shouldn’t, uh.”

“Hang?”

“Or, at least, you wanna be the one to do it, which is more than anyone’s ever done for me, so I’m kind of sentimental about it.”

“I don’t want to hang you.”

“Well, there go my dreams of black romance.”

Terezi reaches over and tweaks her nose. She squeaks and flicks Terezi’s auricular shell.

“You,” Terezi begins, and reconsiders. It feels weird to be drinking to the death of her ex-kismesis with her client. It feels weirder to want to say things, not about the death of her ex-kismesis, but about and to her client. The sensation of discombobulation, for a while only a childhood memory, returns with a vengeance. What she wants to say floats in and out of her conscious thinkpan, twisting and restructuring itself, contorting in impossible dimensions like an organic tesseract. “I don’t understand you,” she says, instead of what she wants to, because she’s still lucid enough to understand that what she wants to say now is not what she’ll want to have said when she’s sober.

“ _Me?_ You don’t understand _me?_ What’s not to understand?” Vriska lifts her head, bemused. “I’d have thought you had me figured out the minute I walked into your cellblock.”

“You’re bizarre. You’re a walking contradiction to every known law of behavior.” Terezi tips her head back against the reclining platform. Vriska grunts in acknowledgement of the fact, but offers neither refutation nor agreement. She resettles her head in the crevice of Terezi’s neck.

“Where did you get _mind control_ from, anyway?”

Vriska snorts. “That’s your question? I’m a ‘walking contradiction to every known law of behavior,’ and you ask about telepathy?”

“You’re a blueblood. Your caste isn’t supposed to have powers. It’s unfair and also highly curious. Indulge me.”

“Fine, then.” Vriska stretches, gangly arms sprawling over the platform. “I dunno.”

“Incorrect! And immensely dissatisfying. Try again.”

“I really don’t! It was just something that kind of. Happened. When I was younger. Like, I’d be hanging out with someone, all chill, and then I’d think — I want them to do _this,_ or, it’d be sweet if they would say like _that,_ and then it would . . . happen. Just like that. I didn’t figure out it was because of me until I was like, five.” She pauses. “Tried it on Ampora, a couple of times. But it doesn’t really work on anyone higher than jade.”

“What can you do?”

She shrugs, a movement that digs her shoulder into Terezi’s side. “Read minds. Control them, to some extent, but not for long. It’s exhausting. Protect them, too, probably against other telepaths. That one’s just a guess, though, I haven’t ever tried.”

“Did you use it in FLARP?” They’re edging close to dangerous waters. Wrigglerhood is not a topic most trolls are keen to discuss. Vriska does not seem the kind to break that trend.

“Yeah. Sometimes.” She reaches for her glass and Terezi pulls her hand away. “Not a lot, though. It’s boring when your enemies go ahead and just keel over dead for you. And after kids started getting older, their psychic defenses were harder to beat, especially the highblood ones. I could kill them just as well with the Octet as I could with my mind, and one gave them half a chance.”

“Were you any good?”

“Was I any good! I hit the top of my echeladder!” Vriska stabs a thumb at her chest. “You couldn’t find a ship on the water that didn’t shake at the sound of my name.”

“Impressive.”

“You bet your ass, it was. My kill count was on the leaderboards for six sweeps straight.”

“You played for six sweeps?” Terezi snorts. “You didn’t get a hobby, or something?”

“FLARP was my hobby,” Vriska says quietly.

“Well, I played too, but unless you were out there every day—”

“I was.” She plucks at the cuff of her shirt mindlessly, restlessly. “You don’t get levels by slacking off.”

“That’s — why? Even the top players in my region didn’t go out _every_ day.”

“Yeah, well. My region wasn’t a _chump_ region, so.” Vriska curls her legs up underneath her, eyes fixed on the television. An add for the Condesce’s latest line of hair product plays, a discordant combination of loud, jazzy music and bombastic pink splashes.

“Why did you stop?”

She shrugs aggressively. “Didn’t need to play anymore.”

“Didn’t ‘need to’?”

“What is this, an interrogation? I got bored.” Vriska leans away from the platform and changes the channel, flicking through the late-day programming erratically. “It happens.”

“Why did you really stop playing?”

She wets her lips, sets down the remote. Mutes the television. Her hands clench and unclench on her knees; a vein jumps in her neck. 

“Tell me what you know about spider lusii,” she begins, quavering.

“ _Lusus naturae araneae._ Incredibly large, extraordinarily rare. Highly carnivorous.” Terezi pauses, brow furrowed. “Extinct.”

“Right on three counts.” Vriska’s hands migrate to her hair, where they tangle themselves into secure knots. “They don’t eat normal food. Or, uh, animals. Can’t digest them. Apparently there’s a protein, in — in troll blood —” She grinds her teeth, once, hard enough to make an audible scraping noise, and continues. “Anyway, she — _they —_ they’re so rare because half the time they eat their grub before it can pupate, and then they starve to death because nobody takes care of them. Dumbasses. Accordingly, the ones that survived — they’re smart. Really smart. Gotta be.” She falls silent and lets Terezi think.

“Your lusus.”

“Was a bigass spider, yeah. And — when you’re young, you don’t, you can’t, uh, you can’t really kill trolls, as quickly, so she was hungry. A lot of the time.” She tugs at her hair. “If you kill people in FLARP, no one bats an ocular.” Another, longer pause, one of preparation. “Tavros — you know him, the guy Megido talked about. He was one of the FLARPers. He — you asked if I killed him. Well! Now you know.”

Terezi waits.

“Anyway!” She releases her hair. “It started to piss off people. Especially my friends, who weren’t always cool with it. The ‘killing people’ thing. Which was pretty damn hypocritical of them, if you ask me, because I didn’t do anything that they didn’t, except in higher numbers! They were just throwing around arbitrary rules, like ‘too many’ and ‘too much.’ _Bullshit_. They were all jealous of me.”

“And?”

“So I stopped.”

“Just like that?”

“Well — not just like that, no.” She drums her fingers on the reclining platform’s arm. “She had to be dealt with, didn’t she? Otherwise, she might’ve gone out hunting, herself. God knows what she would’ve done.” Her hand touches her breast pocket thoughtlessly. “And it wasn’t fair, to let her die of starvation, after she kept me alive for eight sweeps. It’s not fair to just _let_ people die.”

“You killed her,” says Terezi.

“Does it surprise you?” Vriska sounds bitter. “Are you disappointed? Do I make sense, now? Must clear up a lot for you, knowing I’ve been a criminal since I was eight.”

She doesn’t smell as defensive as she sounds. She smells desperate, and sad, and very much afraid. Pitiful.

“And, you know, it’s not easy — having a guardian who might kill you any night of the week. It’s not easy. And people look at you, like, like you’re some kind of monster. For doing what you have to. But I’m not. Wasn’t. I did what I had to do, I did what _any_ troll would do, I survived. I’m still here. I dare anyone who’d hate me for what I did, to — to choose differently, in my place. You understand, don’t you? You do, you’ve got to understand —” 

Terezi reaches over and takes her hand. It stills her.

“Uh,” Vriska says.

“Be quiet.”

“Okay.”

Terezi draws her thumb along the tendon of Vriska’s forefinger. Vriska’s hands are long, bony, rough as unpolished stone. Cooler than Terezi’s, as a result of the sea-blue blood within them. Her pulse skitters like an animal in a trap’s. Terezi strokes her hand again, and it slows.

“So, like —”

“Vriska.”

“Mm-hm?”

“Be _quiet.”_

It sticks, this time. She eases back onto the platform, her spine curling neatly into the arch of the cushions. Her eyes flutter closed and the hard, unpleasant set of her mouth eases into something less severe; not happy, necessarily, but calm. Terezi’s thumb makes a few more passes over her knuckles, and then she lets go, stands up.

“I’m going to sleep,” she says. “I’ve had too much to drink to talk coherently.”

“Only fuckin’ person I ever met who could use ‘coherently’ in a sentence while drunk,” Vriska mumbles, but she opens her eyes. Anxiety rewrites itself into her posture. “I’ll, uh. I’ll see myself out, then.”

Terezi leans heavily on her cane and clambers to her feet. “You have a recuperacoon in your respiteblock, yes?”

“I mean. Yeah. No, yeah, you’re right, of course I do.” Vriska stands up and wipes her hands on her pants. “I’ll go.”

“What?”

“I mean, it, like. It’s dumb. It’s really fucking dumb. Never mind.”

“If you don’t spit it out soon, so help me Handmaid, I will drub it out of you.”

“It’s diluted,” Vriska blurts. “The sopor level. Probably because it was meant for prisoners, who aren’t worth a lot of government resources, but. It’s hardly better than sleeping dry.” She backs away. “But I’m not a fucking wuss, you know, I’ve handled weak sopor before. It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Not like you’re responsible for maintaining the recuperacoons, right? That’s petty shit. Probably didn’t even run it past you when they were putting it in. Anyway. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Vriska turns. Terezi snags her arm.

“You shouldn’t be sleeping dry,” she says, and the thought returns again, the odd unspeakable nameless sentiment drifting across her pan, warm and blurry. “I’ll have them up the sopor dosage.”

“Right. Well. Thanks. Decent of you, Pyrope.” Vriska stuffs her hands in her pockets. “I’ll —”

“You can share, tonight,” Terezi offers, feeling increasingly wrigglerish by the minute. “I don’t want you working on my ship if you’re hungover _and_ tired.”

“Are you serious?” Vriska’s head whips around, incredulous. “You’d —”

“If you don’t want to,” Terezi snaps, cheeks growing hot, “by all means, take your leave —”

“No! I’m happy to — I figured you wouldn’t —”

“I _offered,_ what makes you think I’d offer if I didn’t mean it —”

“I dunno!”

Terezi rubs her ganderbulbs beneath her glasses. “Just,” she says tiredly. “Never mind. Slime’s yours if you want it.” She approaches the door to her respiteblock and types in the entrance code. The doors slide open with the dull scrape of metal on polished tile. 

She walks in. Terezi’s respiteblock is small, oblong, with a ceiling wider than the floor. The walls are the same grey as the rest of her quarters, decorated with a handful of faded photographs. One desk sits in the far corner, carrying stacks of paperwork and her husktop, and as a spit-laden copy of Oliver Holmes Jr.’s _The Common Law._ The recuperacoon is pushed up against one wall — a pricier model, bought with her first paycheck; it’s black, ovular, with a long, broad slit at the top and a deep well of slime cradled between its glass walls. A skylight centered over the center of the room drizzles faint blue light from New Bellona’s distant sun through the ceiling, pooling in thick squares across the rug.

Vriska pulls off her boots and lines them up aside the door, uncharacteristically polite. She radiates awkwardness; Terezi doesn’t need her nose to tell her that. They both putter around the room, preparing for slime in their own ways, intentionally avoiding each other’s notice, orbiting each other at a distance, like binary stars. It’s horrifically embarrassing. Terezi is forcibly reminded of her first time sharing a recuperacoon with someone — her first flushcrush, sweeps ago. It took an hour for either of them to shed an article of clothing. This is nothing like that. She will not allow it to be like that. 

“Well,” she announces, more than a little irritated at herself, “good morning.” She strips to her underwear and her undershirt and sinks into the sopor, shutting her oculars. She remembers to take off her glasses at the last moment, plucking them from her nose and tossing them onto a shelf beside the recuperacoon.

Vriska is still wearing her blouse and her pants when she sinks a leg into the sopor. Terezi drifts aside obligingly, keeping her head above the surface, and waits for Vriska to submerge herself up to the waist before dipping below. 

The slime rushes into her nostrils. The daily panic nips at the back of her thinkpan, the return of true blindness; she opens her mouth, forcing herself to breathe normally. Smell returns gradually, limited by the bounds of the slime itself, but she can detect Vriska beside her: even coolblooded as she is, her extra body heat warms the slime to a sluggish, comfortable temperature. Her enormous hair floats loose, brushing Terezi’s cheek, her arms, her neck, and her limbs brush from time to time against Terezi’s. 

Terezi relaxes, and her pan drifts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I will ask you for mercy_  
>  _I will come to you blind_  
>  _What you’ll see is the worst me_  
>  _Not the last of my kind_  
>  —Troll LP, _Muddy Waters_


	6. Fate and Chance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“The Laws of War under the Alternian Empire, much like any other kind of law that happened to inconvenience the Empress, were noble in theory but sparsely enforced in practice. The conundrum of any regulation of wartime conduct, really, is that its success predicates itself on enforcement — i.e., that the country which places emphasis on its standards must win the conflict in order to punish that country which does not. Yet to beat a rival who does not attempt to maintain the same standards of conduct that one does presents itself as a difficult, nigh impossible task. Exempli gratia: Orphaner Cronus “Dualscar” Ampora, in his trial for violating a law prohibiting the slaughter of foreign children without express permission from the Empress, was recorded saying: ‘Yeah, I did it — and vwhat kinda ass-backvwards court are you running, anyvway, tryna’ prosecute me for vwinnin’?’_
>> 
>> _He was acquitted shortly thereafter.”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

She wakes up gradually, swaying into consciousness with the slow ease of a highblood waltzer. Vriska lays suspended beside her, still sleeping, mouth slightly ajar in her sleep. Her hip bumps into Terezi’s when she stirs. 

Terezi, moving as slowly as she can, presses her feet to the base of the recuperacoon and pushes her face above the surface.

Returning to gaseous oxygen intake takes her vascular system a few seconds. She splutters, hacks up a lungful of slime, and feels her bloodpusher kick into proper gear. The room swims blearily before her eyes, sharpening, blurring, sharpening again. Her nose falters and fails her like a telescope spinning out of focus. A pain flares in her skull, reminding her, none too gently, why she hasn’t drank in large quantities since her Academy days.

Vriska’s leg nudges hers, and she turns, wiping slime from her eyes. The girl in her recuperacoon wriggles at the disturbance in her sleep, brows furrowing, mouth moving in silent complaint. Like this, she is prone and vulnerable. It would be so easy to hurt her, right now, in any way that Terezi preferred. It’s a macabre thought, but one that occurs to Terezi nonetheless. She wouldn’t; it’s the possibility of _could_ that strikes her, that steals the breath from her lungs.

She doesn’t want to hurt Vriska. The idea, not entirely foreign, but heretofore never elucidated, invites itself into her pan without so much as a by-your-leave. She just kind of wants to — _quiet_ her, with a hand over her mouth if need be, but preferably, with a murmured word, a touch to the elbow, or, if she’s really worked up, a grip on the horns, firm and steady, pulling her out of the worst of her own consciousness —

Terezi grinds the heels of her palms into her eyes and quells the urge to scream. _Pale_. Terrible word, awful word. Word that ruins good working relationships and makes awkward fools of the best trolls. Pity never got anyone anywhere, in legislacerative work; if you were a good moirail, you kept your diamond far, far away from anything relating to your job. Terezi, being who she is, stumbles into the worst of all possible situations. It’s a move out of a bad porno, this bullshit that she’s pulling right here. She’s _rented_ this porno.

To be fair, it’s not the _worst_ thing that’s ever happened to her, in terms of quadrants. She killed the _worst_ thing yesternight. It’s up there, though. 

Vriska wiggles more insistently, and Terezi presses herself against the side of the recuperacoon to give her space. 

She surfaces with an inordinate deal of loud snorting and coughing, shoving her hair out of her eyes. For a moment, she just blinks, wiping slime from her face in a contented stupor. Then her ganderbulbs skitter over Terezi, sitting silently in the slime beside her, and the rest of the room, strewn with her shed clothing, and she stiffens.

They contemplate each other for a moment. Terezi decides to let her make the first move. 

“Shit,” Vriska hisses. “Shit, shit, shiiiiiiiit. Did we pail?”

Terezi blinks hard, still groggy. The words knock her for a loop. “What?”

“Did we _pail_ , asshole, P-A-I-L, like the genetic material container, not the quadrant. Did we do it. Is there some bucket of nasty-ass blue sitting around here that I’m a few hungover steps from sinking my foot into —”

“You’re fully dressed, you buffoon —”

“ _Do you remember anything?”_

She sighs through her teeth, massaging her temples. “Are you seeing a bucket I’m not, Serket?”

“No, but that’s not — oh, thank God. No. I remember. It’s okay. We’re good.” Vriska heaves herself out of the recuperacoon and stumbles across the floor, splattering sopor everywhere. Terezi quashes the urge to comfort her.

Instead, she tosses out, “What, I’m that ugly?”

“Pout all you want, wriggler, you’ve obviously never slept with someone you’ve got to live in close quarters with. It’s all downhill from the first pail.”

“If you could keep your cynical platitudes until after I’ve had my bitter bean fluid,” Terezi suggests, “or at least until this pan-ache abates —”

“See! I told you you’d regret that last wheat-distilled sugar-based alcoholic beverage.”

“Say ‘whiskey’ like a proper blueblood, would you,” Terezi mumbles.

“I wasn’t raised in a _lagoon,_ thank you very much.”

“How are you this chipper?”

Vriska smirks, not without justification. “Occupational hazard,” she says. “You develop a resistance to hangovers, drinking with pirates.”

“The court refuses to admit the witness’ testimony, for it is both false and morally repellent.”

“Ha! You’re just sore!”

“What a fucking deduction, Vriska, I’m really very impressed.”

It stuns Vriska for one blissful moment, the expletive dropping her jaw. Then she laughs. The noise rings in Terezi’s ears.

“Man, you’ve got a mouth when you’re hungover.”

“Have you known anyone who didn’t?”

“Fair.” She starts unbuttoning her shirt, peeling the green-filmed silk away from her skin. Terezi’s bloodpusher skitters.

“What are you doing?”

“Uh, undressing? I’m not wearing sopor-wet clothes in front of my crew. Propriety, Pyrope, the Empire runs on it. C’mon.”

“So you’re going out _naked?”_

She angles an odd look at Terezi. “I’d assumed you had more than one shirt, but hey, if needs must —”

“Usually, when people want to borrow other people’s clothes, they ask.”

“Who says I wasn’t gonna ask?”

“You _didn’t,”_ Terezi says, half convinced she’s having post-sopor hallucinations, as Vriska opens her bureau and goes rooting through it. “Most of my clothes are uniforms, anyway, you’ll look ridiculous in teal —”

“Shut your ignorance tunnel, I look great in teal.”

“Legislacerative teal,” Terezi amends, which seems to mollify her. “And it’s not the color so much as it’s — _you_ were the one panicking, thinking we pailed; what do you think wearing my clothes is going to say?”

“I don’t give a damn what it says. If some gutter-panned engineers have lascivious imaginations, that’s their problem, not mine, innit?”

Terezi chokes on a laugh. “Obviously.”

“You worry too much. None of them care as much as you think they do.”

“They care a lot more than _you_ think they do.”

She waves a careless hand. The back of Terezi’s bureau has yielded some beige blouses, some of which she hasn’t seen since she was a Neophyte, and holds one up to her chest appraisingly. “Think this’ll fit?”

“No.”

“We’ll see. You wear baggy shit.” She plucks out a pair of black pants and sidles into the doorway of the ablutionblock. Hesitates.

“About last morning,” she starts.

“Don’t.” Terezi waves at her gracelessly. “Just — it’s all right. Forget about it.”

“I said some things. Figure you’d wanna talk about them.”

“I don’t want to talk about anything, presently,” Terezi says, “and unless you feel that strongly about hashing things out, I would suggest we proceed with studiously not talking about things said under the influence of intoxicants.”

Vriska’s shoulders sag with relief. “Good plan,” she agrees, and closes the ablutionblock door.

Terezi slumps back in the slime and rests her head against the edge of the recuperacoon.

This is not unmanageable. She has dealt with unrequited feelings before; she will deal with them again. She has dealt with inconvenient feelings before; she will deal with them again.

That the subject of her feelings is an interstellar space pirate with a penchant for violence and a lack of steadfast moral convictions may complicate matters somewhat, but Terezi is nothing if not adept at dealing with complication.

She steps out of the slime, feet slick on the floor, and strips out of her sleepwear. Cleaning sopor out of fabric takes ages and more detergent than two normal loads, which is why she tends to sleep naked, except in the instance that someone is sharing her slime. Toweling off doesn’t do the same job as a good, long soak in the ablution chamber, but Vriska isn’t likely to relinquish it anytime soon, wiping off will have to do. She dresses in one of her few remaining civilian outfits, pushing past the rows of legislacerative garb in her closet, ignoring the quiet regret that comes with the decision. She misses her job. It’s odd, missing it, but so she does; she wants a real case, a not-impossible case, something that lends itself to the precise legal work she spent sweeps practicing.

She squeezes the slime from her hair and picks up her cane from where she dropped it aside the desk. There are no new messages on her husktop, unsurprisingly. No one has contacted her since she got the Serket assignment. Least of all the Magistragedy, who might be dead, for all Terezi’s heard of her.

A chime sounds from a speaker in the wall and the intercom fizzles to life. “Crewmate seeking access to the Counselor’s quarters,” reports the AI, pleasantly calm. Terezi pushes herself to her feet and leaves the respiteblock with the intention of answering the door.

Before she can, the doors fly open and Aradia storms through them, hair flying behind her like a stormcloud trailing the wake of a battleship.

“When I gave you the emergency code to my quarters,” Terezi says, with a note of irritation that probably isn’t helped by the things that Aradia’s heavy footsteps are doing to her pan-ache, “it was under the assumption that you wouldn’t use it unless I was actually dead, or fast approaching it.”

“Where have you been?”

_“What?”_ Terezi tugs at her auricular, half sincerely. “I’ve been sleeping. Some of us do that, you know, when the sun comes up.”

“I’ve been looking all over for you!”

“I’m — sorry?”

“Do you even know what’s going on?” Aradia seizes the remote and flicks on the television, scrolling fast through the channels. She lands on a newsfeed and points at the screen. “ _Look!”_

The newsfeeder is a reedy violetblood with curlicue horns and an agitated flush to her cheeks. The television is still muted, so her mouth moves without sound, but the visuals interspersed between spoken segments speak for her: clips of several Church ships converging on New Bellona, great black wings blotting out whole swaths of the sky. Images of subjugglators bleeding into the streets, trampling civilians, swarming, mouthing ecstatic _whoops._ Countless scarlet eyes facing down cameras, chasing them, tackling camera-holders and cutting the footage short with lethal force. A shot from off-planet reveals a behemoth of a ship, almost the size of Port Imperial, drifting towards the planet. Its named is printed across its left flank in jagged purple letters, possibly paint, probably blood.

Terezi cannot move.

Aradia bounces on her heels. “So here’s the thing,” she says. “We’re fucked. _Pyrexia_ can fly, but she can’t enter combat. Her cannons aren’t ready for it, and we don’t have the crew for it.”

“He was a scout,” Terezi says, mouth numb around the words. “He was charting the territory. When he didn’t report, they invaded.”

“Right,” Aradia says, with more patience than Terezi likely deserves, “that’s probably right, but the more important question is how we survive them, now they’re here.”

Terezi licks the television, runs her tongue over her bottom lip. Possibilities rifle through her mind, camera-shutter quick, thousands of permutations of strategy, none of them successful. Each culminates in the brutal death of everyone onboard. 

Vriska steps out of the respiteblock, wringing water from her hair. “Hey, Pyrope,” she begins, and pulls short. “Megido?”

She’s wearing Terezi’s clothes. Her skin is flushed from the shower. Heat and steam wafts from the open door to the ablutionblock. Aradia chokes.

“Counselor,” she begins.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Vriska blurts.

“It’s really not.”

“No buckets in sight, okay, not a single —”

“She is correct.”

“You can even look —”

“The Captain is a bit overexcited in her attempts to prove it,” Terezi says, casting Vriska a reproachful look, “but she tells the truth.”

“I really don’t care,” Aradia says hastily. “Your interpersonal affairs rank low on the list of issues at hand, believe it or not.”

“What are you —” The newsfeed catches Vriska’s ocular and her jaw slackens. 

“Fuck,” she spits.

“Well said,” Terezi says faintly.

Aradia draws a map from her satchel and unrolls it on the bitter bean fluid table. New Bellona sits at the center of it, with neighboring star systems marked on the edges of the paper and its orbit mapped out in white chalk. She pulls some red chalk from her pocket and draws an X on Port Imperial, as well as several floating in New Bellona’s airspace.

“This is us,” she says, pointing to the X. “I talked to the engineer. _Pyrexia_ has enough fuel to travel intrastellarly, but we won’t be able to leave the Nar System. Within the system, there are three planets that will accept unreserved landings, even government ships, all of which are under Church blockade.”

Terezi leans over the table and takes a hard sniff. “Where do you suggest?”

“Ideally,” Aradia says, “here.” She points to a tiny yellow planet snuggled close to Sol-124. “This is Syneca. It’s where most banking clans keep their solid assets, so it’s hardly inhabited at all. The banking stores are guarded, but the rest of the planet is left well enough alone. We could land at one of the outposts, refuel, and be out of the system within a night.” She sets her finger on the largest Church ship, which stands directly between New Bellona and Syneca. “But _this_ is the _HCSS Miracle,_ the flagship of the Church armada.”

Terezi sits down slowly on the reclining platform, steepling her fingers in front of her head. “Well,” she says, attempting cheer and landing something closer to macabre bravado _._ “That’s certainly problematic.”

“What’s the deal with the _Miracle?”_ Vriska shrugs, aggressively brave. “It’s just a big-ass ship. You get your engine working right, _Pyrexia_ will run circles around anything that doesn’t have a quantum drive, which ships over the Abernathy-class size bracket never do.”

“The deal with the _Miracle,”_ Terezi says, massaging her returning pan-ache, “is that it’s a floating hive for the Grand Highblood.”

“What, _the_ Grand Highblood?”

“Do you know any others?”

Aradia taps the X. “Chucklevoodoos,” she explains. “The sheer concentration of energies around the ship make it difficult to fly past. We’d have to give it a mile-berth, at least. Not to mention its cannons —”

“Well, that’s not gonna work,” Vriska says, “because there isn’t a mile gap in the blockade.”

“Be that as it may, unless you want to be skewered by their frontal weaponry —”

“Cut the lip, Officer, I’m just pointing it out.”

“A little less of the wrigglerish infighting, a little more generating solutions, if it isn’t too inconvenient,” Terezi snaps.

Possibilities sprawl out before Terezi like unraveling yarn, winding trails, all culminating in disaster. They can’t fight that many clowns. There isn’t a way. If they get caught, their chances of survival are slim; if they run, even slimmer.

“Are you _sure,”_ Vriska insists, “that _Pyrexia_ can’t beat _Miracle?”_

“Yes!” Aradia throws up her hands, oculars turned heavenwards in exasperation. “I’ve run the tests! The _Pyrexia_ is an Abernathy-class cruiser, equipped with two hundred star cannons and a quantum hyperdrive. She’s the fastest ship this side of the Ophiuchan Ring, I’d happily ride her into a gunfight with anyone that wasn’t a _god,_ but the _Miracle_ will tear through her like paper.”

Vriska rests her knuckles on the star charts. “Fastest warship.”

“What do you mean?”

She draws a line from New Bellona to Syneca with her index finger. “Pyrope’s got the fastest warship. Not the fastest ship.” 

Terezi wrinkles her nose. “What the hell does that —”

She pauses.

“No.”

“You asked for a solution.”

_“No.”_

“They won’t recognize her, they’ll be expecting us on _Pyrexia,_ and _Vagrant_ doesn’t have an Imperial call sign, they won’t know it’s us until it’s too late —”

“We’re not flying your _pirate ship!”_

“She outran the _Queenside,”_ Vriska insists. “She’s beat Ampora, she would’ve beat the _Sapphire,_ if she’d gotten a fighting chance —”

“And the _Sapphire_ could’ve ripped a hole in her hull the size of a small cruiser! She’s one scrimmage away from the junkyard, and you want to pilot her through a Church blockade?”

“Seeing as she’s the only thing in this star system that’ll outdo the juggalo’s clunker, yeah, I’d say I do!” Vriska brandishes her finger at Port Imperial, landing on the unmarked specter of the _Vagrant_. “It’s her or the _Miracle_.”

Terezi breathes deeply. Considers. Traces the line of possibility out to its fullest extent, out to the point where it splinters into unpredictability, and examines the layers of probability. Weighs how much luck they’ll need against how much luck Vriska seems to carry with her. The resultant odds are horrific, but at least they’re odds. They’re chances.

“Tell the crew to pack whatever they can carry without drawing attention,” she tells Aradia. “Begin evacuation protocols with all due haste.”

Aradia nods and slips out of the room, tapping orders into her wristtop. Vriska takes a breath and turns to Terezi, words brimming on the tip of her tongue.

Terezi steps away from the table, shaking her head. “It’s all right,” she says. “It’s all right.” 

“She’s your ship,” Vriska says. “It’s all right to be upset about leaving her behind.”

“I’m not a seagrift. A ship is just a way of getting from one place to another.” Terezi folds her fingers over her cane with delicate precision. “ _Pyrexia_ is just a ship.”

“Ships aren’t just ships. Even lawbugs know that.” Vriska traces the red X. “Was she your first ship?”

“No.”

“Are you lying?”

“Do you think I’m going to answer that question honestly?”

“Is the answer to both questions ‘yes’?”

“Yes.” Terezi dips her head and licks the map of New Bellona, with dignity. “Red,” she says, somewhat fond. “I always liked red.”

“You’re weird as hell.”

“Cutting observation, Captain. Have any others?” 

Vriska smiles wryly. “Not many, no.”

“Well, then.” Terezi claps her hands. “Let’s go find your rust bucket.”

 

* * *

 

Vriska leads. They linger under the eaves of tall buildings — twenty-odd trolls, attempting to cross a juggalo-infested city, among them a wanted criminal and the legislacerator responsible for her defense — and knit themselves into the areas with the thickest crowds. Cling to the alleys, where possible. Most of the clowns are concentrated in open areas, pushing regular civilians to the side streets, making it easy — or, at least, easier than initially anticipated — for a hooded band of fugitives to slink under the radar.

They don’t go unnoticed. Twice, someone in the paint takes a look too long at them, notices the color of Terezi’s eyes gleaming from under her cloak. Both times, Vriska puts a hand to her temple, and they slump to the ground before they can rouse the alarm. Terezi believes that they’re asleep. She decides to keep believing that, even at the expense of asking.

Vriska makes liberal use of her vision eightfold. Once or twice, she turns the whole party around and makes them take an entirely different path, unwilling to risk an encounter with invisible adversaries. The scuttling movement of her eight pupils becomes at times unnerving, particularly when they dart in separate directions. As a consequence of her caution, the route to the shipyard takes twice as long as it should. Tension screws itself more securely into Terezi’s limbs with every minute they spend in the open.

“The Church is placing the planet under embargo,” Aradia notes, scrolling down her wristtop. Newsfeeds flash quickly over the screen, updating frantically as the situation develops. “No passenger ships are being permitted exit.”

“Good thing we’re not flying a passenger ship.” Vriska appears undeterred by the new obstacle. “They won’t be looking for us, and they won’t bother chasing a little merchant ship if they’re looking for a cruiser. Tell that brownblood to pick up the pace, if he lags behind we’re leaving him planetside.”

“Yes, Captain.”

They pass a fountain littered with Faygo bottles. Terezi lifts a hand over her nose and walks closer to Vriska.

“Sending one subjugglator is a punishment,” she says. “Sending a legion is overkill, I’d think. What did you do?”

“I mean, I killed a couple of their underpriests. They get touchy about that.”

“Underpriests die all the time. _You_ merited a planetwide blockade.”

Vriska turns her head sharply, eyes scanning the wall beside them, and relaxes only well after they’ve past it. “Is now the time? I feel like now isn’t the time.”

“Presently, death lurks around every corner, and it wears white greasepaint. If there is a time for anything, the time is now.”

“If you start waxing philosophical every time you’re confronted with imminent death, you clearly don’t get out enough.” 

“Be that as it may, I’d still like an answer. I don’t want to die without knowing what it’s for.”

Vriska exhales heavily through her nose, but doesn’t argue. “You remember the Fourth Peregrenic War, yeah? Fuck, you’re old enough, you must’ve been conscripted.”

“They exempted legislacerators from active service. I advised a few generals, offered counsel in a few wartime court cases. You wouldn’t consider what I did ‘conscription.’”

“Well, fine enough, then, but you remember it. You must know I was in it, anyway, you read my file.”

Terezi shakes her head. “If it wasn’t in the Ampora Deposition, the Bar probably doesn’t know about it. War service was nowhere in the Ampora Deposition.” She tilts her head. “ _Did_ you serve?”

“ _Really?_ God, I’ve been running around thinking you’ve got books written on me — ha! — and here you are, blind as — well, never mind.”

“No, go ahead. Far be it for me to hog all the blind jokes to myself.”

Vriska rolls her shoulders uncomfortably and looks away, checking around a corner before beckoning the crew out into the street. “I didn’t mean it that way. Point being, I was in the army at the time.” She catches Terezi’s hard double take, grins. “What, he neglected to mention that I was an army brat? Seems kind of important.”

“You went off the map after nine sweeps!” Terezi is tempted to push back her hood, just to get a clear whiff of Vriska’s scent, search her for lies. “Even the Admiral can’t account for your location during that time! You _enlisted?”_

“Under a different name, obviously, but yeah. The army’s a great place to get lost if you’re not looking to stand out. They don’t give a damn what you’re about, if you’re willing to take orders.” Her lips twitch into a small smile. “You should tell your superiors to check their ranks more thoroughly.”

“First of all, they’re not my superiors. And second of all — so you were in the army. Doesn’t answer my question with regards to the Church.”

“I’m _getting_ to that part! So it’s the Battle of Trezk, right?” Her vision eightfold swivels around and ogles the building to their left. “And I’m serving as part of this special ops team. Think it was because of the telepathy bit, I reported that on my entrance app — goddamn idiot, didn’t know well enough not to tell them I was a mutant — and they ask us to do this suicidal bullshit. I mean, suicidal _bullsh—_ Aradia! Tell that asshole near the back of the line to _pick up the fucking pace_ or I swear to God, I’ll kill him myself, and if he knows what the subjugglators will do to him if they catch him, he’ll thank me for the offer —”

Aradia lifts an eyebrow. “Would you like that verbatim?”

“Or paraphrase it, y’know, spruce it up with whatever tone is going to make him move his fucking _nubs_. Empress’ fangs, do I have to spell everything out? Where was I?”

Terezi hides a smile behind her hand. It takes the edge off the feeling of perpetual danger. “Suicidal bullshit,” she suggests.

“Right! Suicidal bullshit. So they’re asking us to invade this fortress near the south of Trezk, which is fortified to high hell with Peregrines. I figure, no way I’m going to die doing this bullshit. So I start whispering around, right start spreading word. Encouraging a little bit of mutiny.”

“I thought you gamblignant types were morally opposed to mutiny.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t a gamblignant at the time, was I? And besides, it was a government ship, and only half the crewmates were there of their own will, I don’t think the Mindfang Codes applied.” She holds up a hand, waits for a trio of subjugglators to stride past them, keeps moving, treading slowly. “So we have a little mutiny.”

“Successfully?”

“I ran it, what do you think?”

Terezi raises her eyebrows and says nothing.

“Fuck you. It worked. _Obviously_.”

“All right, but you have to admit —”

“I walked into that one, yeah, fine, what-the-fuck-ever. Not the point. There were a couple of underpriests keeping the Church law onboard the ship, we take them out, poison in the morning bitter bean fluid. Easy. Less easy is getting the ship off Trezk, because the overseer in the corps is a subjugglator, and there’s no getting past the overseer without someone ending up dead. But this is a special ops corp, right? We’ve got half a dozen psionics and three telepaths.” She smirks. “So I broke their goddamn ship in half.” 

Terezi furrows her brow. “What does that mean?”

“You’re thinking about this figuratively,” Vriska explains. “No. I mean literally. I _broke_ a Church _ship_ in _half.”_

“Physically?”

“Physically. All it took was some dynamite and a coupla psionic triggers.” She grins, distant pride flaring in her oculars. “Goddamn, but that was a great squad.”

Terezi nods. “The Peregrenic Wars were sweeps ago, though,” she points out. “Haven’t they caught you before then?”

“I used my real name after leaving the army. They thought I was some broad named ‘Naraea _._ ’ Bet they didn’t even realize that they were looking for Vriska Serket until they targeted me for taking out their underpriests, a perigee or two ago.” She thins her lips. “Guess that was probably a mistake.”

“Probably,” Terezi agrees. She hesitates. “When the dossier says ‘crimes of war,’ though—”

Vriska’s expression darkens. “Bullshit,” she snarls. “I didn’t — look. _Technically._ Because it was in the context of a war, and because I didn’t declare my intent to give no quarter, attacking the Church ship was, according to a bunch of old fucks who were ancient before the Empress was a wriggler, a war crime. But you try declaring intent to give no quarter to a juggalo and not being _shot out of the fucking sky!”_

“ _Shh_ ,” Terezi insists, tugging her along. A clown sends them a sidelong look, eyes glazed from sopor-drunk stupor, and she ducks under an alcove. They’re within scenting range of the shipyard, and she can taste the rusted metal of the scrap heaps rising at the end of the street. They’re close — they’re almost there, they’re almost _there_ , just another hundred yards.

“Point taken,” she amends, patting Vriska’s elbow distractedly. “Totally not your fault, you did nothing wrong, et cetera, et cetera. Still doesn’t make sense, though.”

“What doesn’t?”

“You’re not _that_ important. So you did something superfluously dramatic. You don’t blockade an entire planet for one dumb criminal.”

“I’ll show you ‘superfluously dramatic’ —”

“Please don’t. My point is a broader one.” Terezi walks faster, almost without meaning to, propelled by excitement at the prospect of escape and her own frustrations. “What have you done that you’re not telling me?”

“Nothing! I’ve told you everything!” Vriska’s voice is gruff, aggression layered thickly over an undercurrent of hurt. She wants to be trusted. Terezi has never met anyone who so desperately reeks of a longing to be trusted, or anyone who would so vehemently deny it, if asked.

She sniffs the air. Vriska tells the truth, insofar as she believes that she’s not lying. It’s a far less satisfying result than it would have been, had she lied; it’s useless, trying to wring the truth out of trolls who believe that they’re telling it. 

“Fine,” she says. “We’ll worry about the _why_ later, then. Focus on getting off-world, now.” 

“All right.” Vriska tips up her chin and lands her steps a bit heavier on the pavement, positively emanating displeasure. She doesn’t like being out of the loop, even if the loop is entirely contained within Terezi’s mind. It’s endearingly wrigglerish.

They pass the entrance to the shipyard, begin to climb the fence. With more people, it’s more difficult to remain quiet; Vriska hovers by the gate with Terezi, seeing trolls through it with a push here, a saddle-up there. Aradia leads the line, casting anxious looks over her shoulder. Terezi’s hand twitches on her cane’s head.

“They need to move faster,” she murmurs. They’re going as fast as any large group of trolls can be expected to climb a sharp obstacle, and it still isn’t fast enough. A squad of subjugglators is approaching from the West — she can smell it on the wind, a gust of oils and blood — and there’s no peaceable explanation for sneaking a crew-sized group into a shipyard. Not with the planet under embargo.

Vriska jabs the nearest crewmate in the back. “Pick up the fucking pace,” she hisses.

“It doesn’t matter. They could double their speed right now, and we’d still be spotted.” Terezi grips her cane tightly. “Can you distract a group of seven subjugglators?”

“What, telepathically?”

“Yes.”

Vriska, with admirable foolishness, considers it. “No,” she admits, at length, with extreme reluctance. “Highbloods already push the limits of what I can do, and distracting them from something occupying their direct attention would need a lot of influence. Maybe, with one, I could try, but — there’s too many.”

“What do you think of fighting them?”

“It took both of us to kill one of them, yesterday.”

“To be fair, he was among their best.”

“Yeah, but at some point, quantity trumps quality. I’ll take a lot of odds, Pyrope, but I won’t take those.”

“It seems an arbitrary distinction,” Terezi argues, “that you, for all your willingness to accept impossible chances, would reject this one.”

“How about the non-impossible scenario of us hightailing it the fuck out of here?” Vriska jerks a thumb over her shoulder. “No fighting. No telepathy. Just good old-fashioned legging it.”

“Are we fast enough?”

“Guess we’ll find out.” There are four crew members left on the street-side of the fence; the vast majority have slipped into the shipyard, unnoticed. The subjugglators wander within eyeshot, clubs trailing warm hues of blood on the street behind them. 

“Run,” Vriska tells Terezi, tugging her arm, and sprints for the ship.

Uproar rises from the subjugglator troupe. Probably without realizing the nature of their quarry, they begin pursuit, rushing the shipyard with weapons aloft, incited by the mere possibility of a chase. The right of the subjugglator to a cull is unquestionable and divine. There is no legal recourse for murder by subjugglator; this was the first lesson in _Religious Law._ Those legislacerators who did not learn it, and learn it quickly, were not long for the world.

The crew gets the idea quickly. They dash for the _Vagrant,_ which lies just around the nearest scrap heap, her beaten hull gleaming like the walls of a sacred city for all the refuge she provides. One of them shoves Terezi off-balance in his panic, using her as momentum to propel himself forward. Vriska seizes her arm before she can fall behind and hauls her back upright.

“Try that shit again and I’ll put a bullet in your head,” she snarls at him. He cowers and darts ahead.

“Thanks,” Terezi mumbles, but she doubts Vriska hears. She can barely hear a thing herself, with her bloodpusher thundering in her ears like the beat of a behemoth’s drum. Even the juggalos’ cries grow muffled in lieu of her own newfound sensitivity to the internal tick of her vascular system, the rushing of blood in her auriculars. 

Vriska flicks the key fob just as the foremost members of their group reach the _Vagrant._ The stairs tumble from her loading area, immediately groaning with the burden of trolls scrambling over each other in disorganized frenzy.

It all happens quickly.

A yellowblood near the back of the group trips over a piece of scrap metal jutting out from the ground and grabs the nearest crewmate to steady himself. They both stumble, drop to their knees, and scramble back to their feet as fast as possible, but it costs them dozens of feet in distance. The subjugglators are hardly a full step behind them.

Terezi and Vriska hurtle up the stairs and through the waiting doors at the end of them. Tumbling into the loading area, they follow the last of the crew, including Aradia, who waits by the door switch, poised to close the ship.

“Where are the others?” She ducks her head into the entrance, taut as a strung wire. “What happened?”

“Not important.” Vriska starts shoving people towards the ladder. They scramble up to the main cabin like spiders, hands and feet scrabbling at the wall between bars. “They fell behind. They’re clown fodder, now.”

“That’s ridiculous. They can make it, look.” Aradia hangs in the doorway, beckoning them with impassioned gestures. “That’s not that far!”

“No, it’s not, but they’ve got subjugglators on their tails.” She leans over on her knees, gathering breath. “Shut the doors.”

“Hold on!”

The juggalos have noticed Vriska and Terezi among their prey; their screeches redouble, and they put on a burst of speed. Chucklevoodoos crackle and bubble from the air around them, suffocating in their pervasiveness, inducing a sensation like an injection of ice in a vein. Terezi unsheathes part of her sword. It fails to comfort her.

“I said to shut the _doors.”_ Vriska rises and glowers. “That wasn’t a solicitation for your personal views on your matter.”

“And I told you that they’ve got a chance! They have a chance!” Aradia is pleading. Vriska doesn’t care.

If anything, it incenses her. “They _had_ a chance! Shut the damn _doors!”_ She pulls the Octet from her pocket, snarling. Terezi isn’t sure if it’s a preemptive measure against the subjugglators or a warning to Aradia. She’s not sure if Vriska knows, either. “You’re going to let them in!”

“They’re members of the crew!” Aradia’s hand hovers over the door’s switch. “Just another thirty seconds —”

“They’ll be _here_ in thirty seconds! We don’t have fucking _time!”_ Vriska buries a hand in her hair, barking out a cruel laugh. “Of all the times for subordination, Megido, you pick _now —_ ”

“I won’t _kill_ them —”

“But you’ll sentence the rest of us, sure! That’s good to fucking now, wish I’d known it before I signed you on!”

“I refuse to hear them!” Aradia’s eyes are wide and wild. “I will hear them! I always hear them, every one of them, the ones I kill — I hear them, the dead, they come for me and _they don’t leave!_ You don’t have to listen to them, you don’t have to _remember —”_

_“You don’t know shit!”_ Vriska seizes Aradia’s collar in one fist, wrenching her off the floor. Her feet scrabble for purchase. “You don’t know _shit!_ I’m glad you’ve had the _luxury_ of developing a puritan conscience, but it’s time to try realism on for size. Newsfeed, bitch! Sometimes trolls die, and sometimes it’s because of you, and sometimes you get those decisions wrong, but _fuck_ you if you think you’re special because you’re _sad_ about it. The universe doesn’t let you take a moment every time a choice tests your goddamn moral convictions, and it _will_ kill you if you try, so if you’re worth half a shit you’ll pull yourself together, save your tears for your moirail, and realize that _they_ died thirty seconds ago, when they chose to pit their lives against _ours!”_ She drops Aradia, who stumbles to her knees, fingers still trembling over the switch. She watches Vriska with her jaw agape.

“You pull that switch,” Vriska says, low, fierce. She draws her pistol and aims it at the approaching crew members, thumbs the hammer. “Or I’ll send them to the Handmaid myself.”

The juggalos are screaming.

Aradia’s mouth moves wordlessly. She shakes her head and turns to Terezi. Fear strips sweeps from her age.

“Terezi,” she pleads. 

Vriska glances at Terezi, eyes hard, jaw set firmly. There is a warning written in the lines of her body, the steadfast angle of her pistol and the clear line of sight between its muzzle and the heads of the approaching crew.

The juggalos are still screaming, victory whoops, triumphant howls. Vriska’s gaze does not waver. Nor does Aradia’s.

She understands, all at once, and with such complete comprehension that it suggests she always has understood, what must happen.

“Pull the switch,” Terezi says. It is detached. Impersonal. Indifferent.

Aradia’s face folds, and she sways into the wall with quiet pain, but she wrenches the lever. The doors swing closed moments before the crewmates reach it, momentum carrying their bodies up against the metal. The juggalos set upon them half a second later, beating their fists against the wall, their snarls audible even through six inches of durasteel. There is still screaming. The screams do not belong to the subjugglators alone. 

Vriska shoves her pistol back into its holster and stares at Aradia, lip curled. “You almost killed us,” she says.

Aradia shakes her head mutely.

“Would that have made you happy? You think you’re a righteous little mutineer, willing to murder twenty trolls for the purpose of saving two?”

“That’s enough,” Terezi snaps. She points to the cockpit. “We still have to break the blockade. This is not the time for confrontations.”

Aradia’s face contorts in fury. “Not the _time,”_ she spits. “Did you _see —_ did you _hear_ what she did?”

“Yes. I also heard myself give the final order, Officer, so if you seek to file a complaint, I am not the troll with whom to do it, nor is now the time to do it in.” Terezi’s voice rings cold, even to her own auriculars. It’s the tone she uses in the courtblock, more a weapon than her sword is. She does not want to contemplate why she employs it now. “So unless you want their sacrifice to mean nothing, you will hate us in silence for as long as it takes to escape this miserable little planet.”

Aradia scrubs a hand over her face, breathes deeply, once, twice. Vriska steps back to give her some space.

“Fine,” she says, and rises to her feet. She smoothes out her pants with admirable dignity, and when she looks up, her face greets Vriska without a trace of emotion. “I await orders.” A deliberate, disdainful pause. “ _Captain_.”

Vriska squares her shoulders. “Man the cockpit,” she says. “Prep crew for liftoff.”

“What should we do about the missing chairs?” The question is devoid of blame, delivered only as a neutral inquiry into strategic approach. Aradia blinks.

“Fill ‘em if they’re necessary. Leave ‘em if they’re not. Leave the comm center and the mediculler’s seat open, if you need to.”

“Yes, Captain.” Aradia offers no parting nod of respect, as is custom. She walks away without so much as a word.

Vriska exhales heavily. Her hands drop to her sides, fidgeting, aimless. She looks at Terezi.

“So,” she says uncertainly.

“When I said now was not the time,” Terezi says tartly, “I meant it.”

“I know. I just wanna — I wanna know if you’re gonna be pissed about this.” 

“What?”

“It was shitty.” She scratches her head. “What I said. It was shitty! But it was what she needed to hear. She would not have done it if I hadn’t been an ass to her. That’s the truth.” She gazes at Terezi earnestly. “So if you’re gonna be pissed at me for being a jackass — which, all right, you know? Fair — I need to know. Because — I can’t not know —” She crackles her knuckles, out of what seems to be anxious habit more than any meaningful threat. “Presently,” she begins again, a desperate half-smile tugging at her lips, “death lurks around every corner, and it wears white greasepaint. If there is a time for anything, the time is now.” 

Terezi folds her hands over her cane. Her fingers trace the well-worn shape of the dragon’s nose, each spade-black eye. She imagines the dead trolls outside the door behind the defendant’s table in a courtblock.

“I meant it,” she repeats, speaking carefully. “She acted under my orders. She will blame you for it, more than me, because she thinks you convinced me to do as you wished, but she will be wrong, because my decisions are my own. I am not a hypocrite. And I do not hold you responsible, morally or otherwise, for two trolls who were — as you put it — dead long before she pulled the lever.”

“You think it was your fault, then?”

“Aradia will blame herself,” Terezi says, aware that it isn’t really an answer. “She will, again, be wrong.”

Vriska nods. “Thanks,” she says. Neither of them bother to inquire or provide the specifics of what she’s thanking Terezi for.

 

* * *

 

The cockpit is smaller than the bridge of the _Pyrexia,_ and hardly fits the entirety of the crew necessary to operate it. Low-ceilinged and thick-walled, its work stations are crammed close together, some overlapping; a few chairs are installed so close together that the trolls occupying them jostle elbows in attempts to do their job. There is no seat left unoccupied, so Terezi braces herself on the captain’s chair and grabs a handle protruding from the ceiling, feeling more akin to a subway passenger than a weathered veteran of space travel.

Vriska slides into the captain’s seat and seatbelts lace themselves over her body automatically. “Initiate takeoff procedure,” she orders. The _Vagrant_ rocks from side to side as the engines fire, and then she lurches into the air, unstable but undeniably aloft.

“She doesn’t feel steady,” Terezi says.

“Welcome to spaceflight outside Imperial ships. Megido, are the coordinates programmed?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Fantastic. Increase thrusters to fifty percent, hold speed.”

“Yes, Captain.”

The scenery outside _Vagrant’s_ windshield blurs as she accelerates. The line of juggalo ships grows closer, closer.

“Steady on,” Vriska warns. They’re within range of the Church’s cannons. No one fires; they speed closer and closer to the atmospheric shield, cockpit rattling from the air pressure. The juggalos do nothing. They’re not looking for a merchant’s ship. Terezi reminds herself of this, fervently; _they’re not looking for a merchant’s ship._

The _Vagrant_ jolts as she hits a patch of rough air and the hull moans plaintively. One of the juggalo ships rotates to face them, and Vriska wrenches one of the handles on the dashboard; they leap up another gear in speed, now shooting at maximum velocity for the stratosphere. The cabin bucks under the strain.

Vriska clings to the dashboard. “Hold!” Her hair drifts above her shoulders as gravity twists and reorients itself. “Hold speed!”

Aradia relays the order, but her words are lost under the hull’s groan. Terezi clings to the back of Vriska’s chair and bites down on her tongue to quell her nausea. Vriska gestures sharply to one of the yellowbloods, who shuts her oculars and focuses as faint white energy crackles at her fingertips.

The hull ceases its noise, bound together with the psionic’s efforts, and Vriska pumps her fist. “Yes!” The air rushing against the ship’s nose almost dwarfs her shout, and the cockpit rattles violently, shaking her back into her seat. Her triumph is short-lived; the psionic’s energy crackles out, and she drops to the floor, gasping. But the hull remains quiet. 

Vriska keeps yelling orders, an almost non-stop stream of commands slewing from her mouth. Aradia does her best to keep up with them, but her voice is lost to the din of screeching alarms and panicked shouts.

The _Vagrant_ breaks the atmosphere and keeps climbing, clouds blurring, air pressure ballooning as the hull shrieks with the strain of keeping together at the speed Aradia is pushing her. A few miles off, the _Miracle_ descends. Its silhouette casts a shadow like an eclipse. 

A green light crackles over the warship’s bow, and it fires a blast from the forward hypercannon. It strikes Port Imperial in a wreathed explosion of emerald fire, incinerating the five blocks directly under the blast and burning another eight. Squarely nested within the blast radius, Terezi’s ship is among the fist things to go. The hull crumples under the brunt of the explosion; the vessel sinks quickly into the ground, deteriorating to a scrap heap in a matter of seconds. 

Port Imperial withers in the _Vagrant’s_ wake. _Pyrexia_ burns.

The _Vagrant_ stabilizes, gravity returning to its expected orientation and the hull quieting. Vriska exhales heavily, bracing herself against the dash, a tentative smile tugging at her mouth. “All right,” she says. “All right. All right.”

“Are we good?” Terezi sniffs the dashboard. It tells her little. “Are we gone?”

“Well, we’re not past the blockade, but nobody’s in pursuit.” Vriska flicks a switch above her head, and her seatbelt slithers back into the seat. “Good sign. They think we’re a freight vessel.” She glances over her shoulder at Terezi, hopefully. “No trouble.”

“Lucky break,” Terezi breathes. Vriska grins.

“Right you are.” She presses a few buttons on her display, changing the order of the blinking lights. Terezi’s bloodpusher eases, and she allows herself one — and only one — calming breath. 

Without warning, _Vagrant_ shudders to a halt. Terezi skids a few feet on the floor and grounds herself on the back of the head engineer’s empty seat.

“What the fuck,” Vriska shouts. “What the fuck, what the fuck — status report on lower primary engines.”

“Functional,” Aradia says. “Perfectly functional.” Her fingers fly across her wristtop. “There’s not a thing wrong with her.”

“Well, that’s obviously not true, is it, because she’s not _moving!”_

“My engineers are running tests as we speak, but if there were something wrong with the ship itself, we would have got a malfunction notice.” Aradia bends over the dashboard, scanning its varied displays with anxious speed. “She shouldn’t be stopping.”

“Oh, shouldn’t she? Thanks for the cutting analysis, Officer!” 

“Stop it,” Terezi insists. “Quit abusing your first mate and help her solve the problem.”

Vriska throws the acceleration lever again, with more force, but although the _Vagrant’s_ engines groan with the strain of high gear, she remains perfectly stationary. The ship shakes like a scrap of metal caught between two magnets of equal fortitude. 

“It doesn’t make sense,” she says desperately, which is when the _Vagrant_ utters a deafening creak and starts drifting backward.

“What the _fuck!”_ Vriska vaults over the captain’s chair and pounces on the engineer’s station, elbowing Terezi out of the way. “That’s not something she can even fucking _do!”_

“Backwards,” Terezi says, faintly. “Backwards. Serket —”

“I know, I’m working on it!”

Aradia barks orders rapid-fire into her wristtop. The cockpit collapses into uproar, nobody really knowing what to do; so far as Terezi can tell, none of them have protocol for this.

Her sheathed sword twitches, and she pins it down to her thigh, frowning at it. Slipping a hand into her pocket, she withdraws a one-caegar coin, holds it flat on her open palm. It trembles in her hand, briefly, before flying upwards and pinning itself to the ceiling of the cockpit.

She turns on her heel and sprints from the cockpit. 

“Wh— Pyrope!” Vriska tears herself away from the engineering station, staring at her. “Where are you going?”

“Magnets!” She tears through the doors, holding down her sheath with one hand. The buckles of her shoes tug at the leather, straining for the ceiling; as she runs toward the aft of the ship, the pull draws her forward, the metal on her ensemble moving toward her destination of its own accord.

“Magnets? The fuck?” 

Vriska’s voice is lost behind her. Terezi stumbles in an intersection of hallways, wracks her pan to remember the way to the loading area, swings right at random and keeps running. The _Vagrant_ begins to pull up as well as back, turning the gravity of the ship on its side and making the trek to the loading dock more vertical climb than horizontal track. 

The light falls unevenly on the hallways as she races through them. Bars of red light from Sol-124 cut the tile in uneven lines, spinning across the floor like the spokes of a clock. _Vagrant’s_ natural scent of wet metal fuses with the fetor of sweat and terrified troll. Metal fixings struggle to liberate themselves from their holdings, some succeeding and beating themselves fruitlessly against the ceiling, some merely convulsing in their places. One section of tile uproots itself beneath Terezi’s very feet; she leaps off it and clings to the window for leverage, narrowly avoiding crushing death by marriage of ceiling and floor panel.

She reaches the loading deck as it becomes submerged in darkness. Pressing herself against the window, she takes a hard lick of the viewing glass, clinging to the wall as the ship banks ever more sharply upward.

An enormous ship casts a shadow over the _Vagrant,_ its main carriage a vast, flat disc cast in durasteel grey. A chamber slides open at its center, pouring bright light from its interior, drawing the _Vagrant_ inexorably into its heart. A magnetic tractor beam.

Terezi tastes the glass again and gleans the name of the ship, printed in neat Imperial script along its base in bold, flawless red: **_HCSS GLORIOUS VICTORY_** _._

She falters and draws her tongue back into her mouth as the _Vagrant_ drifts into the larger ship’s holding cell. White light floods the cabin, washing out the hallway’s features, bleaching shadow from the walls. Vriska’s voice echoes distantly from the cockpit. It fades to a ringing in Terezi’s ears, dwarfed by the hum of the larger spaceship pervading the Corvette as it swallows her. 

The doors to the _Victory’s_ holding dock clamp shut behind the _Vagrant,_ trapping her in a weightless chamber of white walls and metal stabilizers. Somewhere, the crew is running for cover. Needlessly so, too; there is nowhere they can hide that will protect them from the _Victory’s_ boarding inspectors. 

Terezi clings tight to her cane and faces the airlock. Her face is steel and her heart is stone. 

The doors slide open. Alarms sound at the unlicensed entry, high-pitched whistles shattering the capture’s silent grandeur. A trio of legislacerators, dressed in clean, impeccable teal, cross the threshold. Terezi folds her hands over her cane and does not deign to look them in the eye.

“Lady Terezi Pyrope,” one declares, rolling the words off his tongue with Neophytic bombast. It’s an amateur performance at best — all pomp, no threat. She snorts.

“You’ve found her.” She indicates her glasses, her cane. Vriska comes skidding into the loading dock, breathing quickly, freezing at the sight of the legislacerators.

“You’ll be coming with us,” he says. His eyes drift to Vriska, and widen. “Is that —”

“This is Vriska Serket, yes.” Terezi smiles blandly. “I would offer a more detailed introduction, but I don’t think it’s necessary, under the circumstances.” 

He nudges two of his associates, who step forward, brandishing sets of prongcuffs. Vriska draws a pair of guns and trains them on both. “Try it,” she warns.

“I wouldn’t,” Terezi advises mildly. “She takes poorly to confinement.”

“Is that why you let her roam free?” The Neophyte’s lip curls. Terezi decides that she doesn’t like him.

“Some of us don’t need prongcuffs to keep a prisoner. It’s an advanced technique, though, Neophyte, so don’t bother yourself over it.” 

He shakes his head. “She’ll have to be detained. We will assign a legislacerative team to watch her while you’re gone.”

“While I’m gone?”

“I’m going where Pyrope goes,” Vriska warns him.

He snickers. “Admirable loyalty, but you won’t be.” He draws his sword. It’s too dramatic; the point arcs through the air for a full two seconds before settling into a proper fighting stance. Terezi sniffs with amusement. “With the permission of Magistragedy Kishar, I authorize the use of nonlethal force in the interests of detainment and impriso—”

“I think the fuck not,” Vriska says, and shoots him in the foot.

He screams and collapses, dropping his sword. Another Neophyte, this one considerably more reserved, steps over him and kicks him out of the way without looking twice.

“Your point is taken, Captain Serket,” she says smoothly. “Please refrain from discharging further weaponry inside the vessel; it will not be necessary. You may accompany Lady Pyrope if you like.” 

Terezi narrows her oculars. “Where do you want to take us?” 

The Neophyte smiles. It’s thin and unconvincing. “The Magistragedy requests an audience,” she says, and gestures to the open door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _You wear a look of surprise_  
>  _Do you know what you’ve done?_  
>  _If I said you were an innocent man with blood on his hands_  
>  _Would you still try to run?_  
>  —Troll The Hoosiers, _Upset_


	7. Word Before Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: the end of this chapter contains some very graphic violence, including permanent bodily harm. That kind of thing has already been present in this story, but given that this chapter steps it up a notch, if severe violence is an issue for you, please take all necessary precautions. There's a pretty clear start and end to the fight, so it shouldn't be too difficult to avoid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“Records of the Signless-Sufferer and his ideological descendant, the Summoner, are inevitably tainted by the perspective of the recorder. The teachings of the former were preserved by the work of the Disciple, which thwarted attempts by the Condescension’s top-notch PR team to bastardize his rhetoric with smear campaigns. The same could not be said of the Summoner. His matesprit, the Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, is scantly noted in records of his campaign. Whether this was an intentional omission on behalf of the Summoned to try and preserve their revolution’s good image — or simply historical erasure on behalf of the government — remains unknown. Regardless, the most reliable evidence suggests that the Summoner did indeed have a matesprit, and that up until her inexplicable death at his hands, they were very much in love. Why he murdered his red quadrant, therefore, poses a question which hundreds of aspiring troll writers attempted to answer in manifold books, plays, and one notable opera.”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

This not Terezi’s fist time onboard the _Glorious Victory._

She had been a Neophyte. It was — and, if the boarding team’s performance is any indication, remains — the Magistragedy’s policy to keep a select group of Neophytes about her, for ‘educational purposes.’ To serve as the Magistragedy’s clerk was an honor and a privilege; to do her legal busywork, apparently, qualified as ‘prestigious experience’ in the field, and at any rate, it afforded considerable connections after departing her service. Terezi was the best of her cohort. Her clerkship, lasting only a perigee, had been one of the most enjoyable experiences of her legal career. Being in the Magistragedy’s consultation team, one came into contact with all kinds of important people.

Now, marched through the hallways between squads of amateurs, Terezi wondered how she ever stood the place.

The entire thing gleams white, missing even a speck of grime to signify the existence of living, breathing trolls on it. There are no windows, walls instead bearing enormous datafeeds, over which news of planets both near and distant scrolls perpetually. Everything carries the faint scent of teal, imbued in the ship’s very bones. Blood and sweat and other bodily fluids have been spilled there, all of it wiped scrupulously away, but none of it ever gone — none of it invisible to Terezi.

Vriska stays close to Terezi, their shoulders brushing with every step, casting erratic glances over her shoulder at the legislacerators bringing up the rear of their guard.

“There’s only five of them,” she mutters, mouth close to Terezi’s ear. “The front two have their backs turned.”

“And they have wristtops. There are about two hundred other legislacerators on this ship who don’t happen to be in this hallway at the moment.”

Vriska’s mouth puckers, as if she’s considering it.

“That’s a _no,_ by the way.”

“Fine.” She adjusts her holster conspicuously. “That shrimpy one hates you.”

Terezi wrinkles her nose. “Why?”

“Thinks you and I are _cavorting_ or some shit. Apparently you lot don’t let your prisoners run your ships.”

“Our collaboration has tested the limits of protocol. He’s not unjustified.”

She rolls her oculars. “Like he’s got room to talk. He lost a trial last week because of a technical infraction. It’s not like _he’s_ some pinnacle of legal might.”

“Really? For a Magistragedy’s clerk? Disappointing.” Terezi sighs theatrically. “What has become of the Academy?”

“Pipe down,” one of the rear guards snaps, and she flashes a grin over her shoulder.

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll send you to the Magistragedy in pieces,” he argues, patting his sword’s hilt. 

She sighs. “Gilber’s First Rule of Intimidation, Neophyte. ‘Never threaten what one cannot perform.’ I can’t have a meeting with the Magistragedy if I’m in pieces, can I?”

“Keep mocking your escort, you’re fast to finding out.”

“I’m giving you _advice._ Pull your head out of your nook, why don’t you.”

It stupefies him. Terezi’s grin broadens, more cruelty than amusement, and she faces forward again.

“I could knock him out,” Vriska offers.

“Telepathically?”

“Sure. One tealblood isn’t hard, assuming that it’s not _you_. He’s not expecting it.”

“Better not. Don’t spoil a good hand on the first round.”

“That’s not even remotely how card games work.”

“Do I look like someone who spends a lot of time in casinos, Serket?”

They turn left. Another pair of legislacerators passes them, nodding to their guards, eyeing Terezi and Vriska with dumbstruck apprehension. Terezi sends one of them a sarcastic salute.

“Megido’s probably been imprisoned.”

“Undoubtedly,” Terezi agrees.

“You gonna try and get the Magistragedy to spring her?”

“I’m more urgently concerned with our own survival, but if the chance appears to spare our first officer from a grisly fate, I’ll be sure to consider it.”

Vriska clucks her tongue. “Far be it for me to discourage you the priority of my own survival, but we can’t well leave here without a crew.”

“You’re presuming they’ll be alive.”

She sets her teeth. “We all keep hope in our own ways, Pyrope.”

“Sure.”

One of the fore guards deals Vriska a light blow to the flank with his cane. “That’s _Lady_ Pyrope,” he instructs her. “Or Counselor, if she prefers it.”

She snorts and rubs her arm. “Oh, dear. Better watch my mouth, shouldn’t I, otherwise this one might pat me on the shoulder some more.”

His face contorts like he’s tasting a lemon.

“Your reverence is appreciated, Neophyte,” says Terezi, “but it’s really not necessary. It won’t help.”

“Do all of them care this much about titles?” Vriska’s lip curls. “I thought that kind of thing ended at purplebloods.”

“You tell me, _Captain_ Serket.”

“Fuck you.”

Another blow lands on her back, this one hard enough to knock her off-balance. “You go too far,” the Neophyte warns. Vriska mutters a curse, massaging the point of impact. 

“Don’t they see you don’t _give_ a shit?” She keeps her voice low, murmurs into Terezi’s ear.

“Assuredly, but I doubt any of them care. An insult to one member of the Bar is an insult to all members. Can’t have a gamblignant scoundrel spitting on the honor of a cherished institution.” 

“And I thought you were uptight. Compared to these assholes, you’re downright rebellious.”

“I wouldn’t joke about that in present company,” Terezi says flatly, and speeds up. Vriska is forced to trot to keep up, despite her longer legs. 

She remembers the layout of the ship, even sweeps after she left it. They are being taken to the Magistragedy’s personal quarters, not an interrogation cellblock, which are kept at the other end of the vessel. This, if nothing else, is comforting.

She reminds herself, insistently, that she has done nothing wrong. There is no reason for them to be imprisoned; this is an interview. A brief audience, its dramatic acquisition merely a compliment.

The Magistragedy’s quarters occupy a whole wing of the ship, a veritable hive of labyrinthine blocks, for entertaining, eating, enjoying her station. Hallways of courtblocks fill the area around it, some occupied, some currently in progress. Snatches of debate catch Terezi’s ear, the vitriolic announcement of a legislacerator in action, the snarl of His Honorable Tyranny. It brings a smile to her face. 

The leading Neophyte halts before a large marble panel and says, “The criminal will remain outside.”

Vriska brushes a hand over her holster in warning. “I sent one partner of yours to the medblock the first time you tried it, lawbug, I’ll send another —”

“This is not a matter of debate. You have been permitted to receive legal counsel from your legislacerator as an extension of your Imperial right to do so. That right does not extend to bear witness to a private conversation between your legislacerator and her commanding officer.” The Neophyte folds her arms behind her back, an almost impeccable recitation of the text; her eyes, however, flit sporadically to Terezi. She is anxious of erring. Such are most Neophytes.

“And if I decide not to give a barkbeast’s ass about your rules?” 

The Neophyte sets her jaw with resignation. “We will detain you.”

“Good luck detaining _bullets_ , Neonate Whateverthefuck —”

“Stop.” 

She rounds on Terezi, gesticulating with her pistol. “You’re gonna let them haul me away? Knowing they’ll do God knows what to me?”

“They won’t hurt you. I’m in charge of your case, and I control what happens to you.” Terezi slides down her glasses, aims her ganderbulbs at the head Neophyte. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Of course. Orders from higher members of the Bar are inviolate.” It kills the kid to say it, Terezi knows it does, but she says it, all the same. 

“There you are. So you’ll stay here and wait for me.”

Vriska gnaws on her lip and eyes the doors suspiciously. “I don’t trust any of them,” she says.

“Good. You’d be an idiot if you did.” Terezi presses her thumb to the print reader aside the door. It beeps and blinks green. “Trust is what you’ve got a gun for, dumbass.”

The corner of Vriska’s mouth twitches; she nods and backs away. 

Terezi steps into the Magistragedy’s chamber.

 

* * *

 

Once, Terezi asked her lusus what a legislacerator was.

She took a moment responding, her old, silent mother; her mind brushed against Terezi’s gently, with a sense of hesitation, and then replied as best she knew how.

_Justice,_ she said, her voice ancient and withered and young and bright. _Violence. Rule. Sun on a dark planet._

“But who _are_ they,” Terezi insisted, curling closer to her mother’s cold white side. Inside, she could feel her stirring, pressing herself to Terezi’s touch. 

Another hesitation; then, the picture of a tall, shadow-faced troll, stark red glasses perched atop her nose, angular horns sprouting from her temples. She held in one hand a dragon’s-head cane. 

She was, in all likelihood, the only legislacerator that Terezi’s mother had ever heard of. Nonetheless, Terezi clung to the mental image, studied it, admired its silhouette.

After a moment’s pause, her mother added: _Bonds._

“What does that mean?”

Her mother didn’t answer. She retreated from Terezi’s mind, sinking back into the depths of her non-birth-death-unlife sleep, and Terezi was alone.

 

* * *

 

Magistragedy Jonika Kishar could be mistaken, at a distance, for Neophyte Redglare.

Her horns rise from the front of her head, tall and straight, with ends tapered to a bladed point. Bobbed hair curls against her chin, the line of which is pointed, as is the sharp angle of her nose. Horn-rimmed glasses, fitted with thick lenses, settle over her teal oculars. Long claws, near white with age, are steepled before her face.

That is where the similarity ends. Upon closer inspection, her uniform is subtly different — the wide sleeves and high-collared cape of a Magistragedy, instead of the aerodynamic Neophyte’s wear — and her horns stand parallel, instead of crooked.

The block is high-ceilinged, white, and circular, with elaborate marble work set into the walls. Busts of famous legislacerators and portraits of the same are hung between vast bay windows, black squares cutting out swaths of space, dotted with distant, twinkling stars and ambling rows of subjugglator ships. An elaborate tapestry serves as a rug, woven in pastel shades, depicting the Empress’ coronation ceremony.

The Magistragedy has draped herself over a white chaise longue in the center of the block, one elbow tucked elegantly over the arm, cradling a china teacup in her hand. Her legs are crossed. She models an idyll of regal insouciance. 

“Counselor,” she notes mildly. “Come in.”

Terezi shuts the doors behind her and edges forward. “Your Most Excellent Cruelty,” she says, and bows.

“Morning. Or evening, is it?”

“I wouldn’t know.” 

“Ah. We’ll go off New Bellona time, then. Morning it is.” She indicates the tea tray before her with her cup. “Have a drink.”

Terezi reaches for the pot; the Magistragedy clucks her tongue.

“Graces, dear, _don’t_.” She snaps her fingers. A lowblood troll enters from a door behind her, head bent with the weight of a thick metal headset. Their eyes are gaunt and dull. They avoid looking at Terezi’s face, instead pouring a new cup of tea, setting it on a fresh saucer, and offering to her. Their hands shake.

Terezi takes it tentatively. Apparently relieved, the troll retreats quickly to whence they came.

“Who —”

“Not a ‘who,’” says Kishar, and brings her cup to her lips. “Sit, please.”

Terezi does. She reaches for her teacup and drops in three sugars. “Thanks,” she says, trusting herself to say nothing else.

“You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

“A long time ago.” Terezi stirs her tea carefully. “I served as a clerk.”

“Did we meet?”

“Briefly. You gave me orders, once.”

“Oh. I’m sorry I don’t remember you. I’ve heard much of you since, if that’s consolation.”

“It’s not something for which I require consoling.”

“Splendid. I won’t bother, then.” Kishar brushes her glasses higher on her nose. Terezi sips her tea, somewhat awkwardly.

“The ship you came here on is not a licensed Imperial vessel.” She observes the swirling patterns of cream in her tea with the scrutiny of a schoolfeeder grading a student.

It’s a classic legislacerative technique. Well-practiced, practically first-day subject matter in _Interrogations 101;_ the provision of information in order to receive more information. A question that isn’t a question. Terezi knows it, and she answers anyway.

“The captive’s ship. A necessary measure.” She measures her words carefully. She isn’t talking to a pirate. What she says is weighed, and weighed carefully, the very syntax of her sentences evaluated for honesty. Speaking to legislacerators is exercise, not conversation.

“Necessary,” says Kishar, testing the word, stretching its vowels. “Elaborate.”

“The Church blockade made it difficult to leave the planet. My ship was insufficient.”

“So you took the criminal’s.”

“I used the resources available to me.”

The Magistragedy hums in agreement. “As do we all.” She takes a final drink of tea and sets the cup down on a saucer before her. Lacing her fingers, she at last lifts her eyes, fixing them on Terezi. “How are you liking Vriska Serket?”

Terezi’s mouth moves, for a horrifying instant, without sound. “To ‘like’ implies more than is proper,” she says, instead of what she means, instead of what the question demands. “She’s my defendant.”

“You’re correct. Answer the question anyway.” Kishar’s face reveals nothing. Terezi sniffs as subtly as she can, but the strong odor of chamomile tea obscures any whiff of emotion she could wrest from Kishar.

“She is not — unlikable,” Terezi hedges. Her fingers itch for her cane. She tightens them on her cup.

“No. I’ve heard that she’s charming, if you get over her general mannerisms.”

“‘Charming’ is an overstatement. ‘Amusingly stupid’ is a more accurate description.”

“Is it?” Kishar laughs, breaking the room’s quiet, if not its tension. Terezi chimes in, hollow and forced. She lies fluidly, excellently, as she always has. She has never met someone who can tell when she is lying; she is terrified that she is before someone who can, now.

“I told your Neophytes not to do anything to her,” Terezi blurts. “Will they keep their word?”

“My employees can be trusted. Don’t fret for your prisoner, Counselor. She’ll be in good shape for her trial.” Kishar rises from her chaise gracefully. “Come to the window.”

Terezi brings her tea with her. The cup scalds her hands when she holds it too tightly, a grounding pain. More importantly, it keeps her hands from shaking. 

“Is it true you’re completely blind?” Kishar snaps her fingers in front of Terezi’s face experimentally. “You move exceptionally well, for someone without eyes.”

Terezi clamps her teeth over a well-rehearsed retort and dips her head. “Since six sweeps, Your Cruelty.”

“How do you manage?”

“My lusus’ guidance was invaluable to me. She taught me to understand the world without sight.” 

_Never give away how you know things,_ her Interrogations professor had told her. _Never tell them your source. To show your open ear is to bare it for attack._

Kishar’s nonchalance flickers, broken by a short-lived moment of frustration. She smooths her robes again and the expression is gone. “It’s a compliment to the Bar that she did,” she says, “for it would have been a shame to lose a mind like yours to the Drones.”

“Medical conditions are not automatic grounds for culling.”

“Incompetence is,” she says casually, and touches her hand to the window. “Can you understand what lies outside this glass, Counselor?”

“Inasmuch as anybody can.”

“My inquiry was not a metaphorical one.” The Magistragedy’s lips thin. “Can you _see_ what is outside the glass, Counselor?”

Terezi wets her lips and presses her tongue to the window, once, quickly. Withdrawing, she says, “Seven subjugglator ships, two of them cruisers. The northern pole of New Bellona. The west wing of the _Glorious Victory._ Innumerable stars.”

“Full marks,” Kishar says admiringly, and Terezi stifles an involuntary twinge of pride. “I watched a recording of one of your trials.”

“Which one?”

“ _Mathys vs. Alternia._ Corporate tax fraud. Very good entertainment. Excellent research.”

“Thank you,” Terezi demurs, and sips her tea. Tension unwinds itself from her shoulders. She allows herself to contemplate a benign reason for the Magistragedy’s call.

“I received your notes,” Kishar says, beginning a stroll around the circumference of the room. She passes a bust of Troll Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior and pats it on the head, apparently without thinking. “You wanted to know why I assigned you to Serket’s defense.”

“I still do.” Terezi sets her teacup aside the bust and gives Holmes a friendly tweak upside the nose, reveling in being so close to the finery. What she could do with this room and some red chalk. “Not to dispute your judgment, Your Cruelty, but —”

“She’s guilty.” Kishar nods, tilts her head to the side, and then says, “Yes. You’re right. She is.”

Terezi’s hand stills on Holmes’ shoulder. “Guilty,” she repeats.

“As a sinner in the Handmaid’s pocket. You’ve seen the evidence. What on Alternia could have convinced you otherwise?” Kishar’s lips twitch in amusement. “It would be easiest case in Bar history, her conviction, wouldn’t it be?”

“So _why_ —”

“How old are you?”

“What?” Terezi lets her hand fall from the stone legal scholar’s face. “Revered Magistragedy, I —”

“How _old_ are you, Counselor.” Ice laces Kishar’s tone. 

“Seventeen sweeps.”

“Young,” the Magistragedy remarks. “Very young. You would have hatched long after the last leveler revolution was crushed, then.”

“I was hatched the season of the Fourth Summoner’s Revolution.”

“Ha.” Her lips twist in scorn. “The _Second, Third, Fourth_ Summoners — they didn’t know the meaning of rebellion. As if any of them held claim to the original’s title. As if the original himself were the first to preach the ideals he did, the first to claim equality as divine right.” Kishar’s lip curls. “Do you believe in hemoegalitarianism, Counselor?”

“No.” It’s immediate, practiced.

“Have you ever met anyone that did?”

“If so, I didn’t know it.” This is another lie. Among Terezi’s friends, prior to her sweeps in the Academy, there were a few equalists. They disappeared shortly after conscription, for reasons not hard to guess.

Silver burns under her collar, sandwiched between the thin layer of her skin and the thinner fabric of her shirt. 

“The original Summoner,” Kishar says, approaching a tall painting. “What do you know about him?”

“What the schoolfeeds teach. Nothing more.”

She traces the face of the portrait’s subject, a muscular cavalreaper with spiraling horns. “Did you know his quadrants?”

“He didn’t have any.”

“You are incorrect.” She smiles, savoring the words. Terezi finds herself imagining Kishar a legislacerator in the courtblock — not a debater after Terezi’s own style, which trends dramatic and eloquent, but of a simpler nature, delivering cases with pointed, irrefutable logic. “He had a matesprit.”

“The feeds said he was culled before he could contribute material to the gene pool!”

“The feeds were also incorrect.” Her smile broadens. “You would be surprised how often it is necessary to reinvent a fact or two for the public good.”

“How many ‘facts’ of the Summoner’s tale are invented?”

“All facts are invented, Counselor. History is a compendium of winners’ recollections. It was something I thought you had learned.” She sighs. “The Academy teaches so little, these days.”

“He could have a descendant,” Terezi says, ignoring the Magistragedy’s barb. “He could be — his descendant could be rabble-rousing already. Have you spoken to the Empress about this? Do others know?”

Kishar shakes her head and draws a line down the painted troll’s sternum. “She knows. She also knows the details of the Summoner’s tale, having survived them.” Facing Terezi, she folds her hands behind her back. “The Summoner’s matesprit, Counselor. Can you give me a name?”

“No. I thought the Summoner died quadrantless.”

“Her name was Aranea,” Kishar says. “She called herself Mindfang.”

Terezi stiffens. 

“You know _that_ name, obviously.”

“Through legend. Nothing concrete. I heard her journals had resurfaced on the deep web a few sweeps ago, but I never went after them. I had presumed they were more fabrication than history text.”

“Let me revise.” She approaches Terezi slowly. “Her name was Aranea Serket. You know her descendant.”

“Vriska is descended from the Summoner?”

“Through one tenth of one thousandth of a gene, perhaps. She’s got far more of her pirate ancestor’s blood than her revolutionary one’s. But a descendant, all the same.” The Magistragedy smiles wryly. “You would be surprised how little blood relation a movement demands of their messiah.”

Terezi places a hand on the glass to steady herself under the guise of inspecting it. “There’s no way to verify that kind of claim,” she argues. “Without a solid genetic test —”

“ _Serket_ is not a common name. Do not mistake serendipity for coincidence.” Kishar steps into the window beside her. “You seem more surprised at her relation to the lowblood than to Mindfang.”

“Vriska knows about the gamblignant. Not about the Summoner.”

“And she told you?”

“She boasted about it, yes. She has — persuasive evidence.” Terezi refrains from disclosing the existence of the Octet. The weapon was thought to be lost sweeps ago. To reveal its existence to an official of higher government, an institution notable for its trigger-happy Artifact Repossession Department, seems a mistake. 

“Interesting.” Kishar cocks her head. “Does she know of the other?” 

“The _other?”_

“You were correct in speculating about the Summoner’s direct descendant. She is not his only kin.” Kishar smiles to herself, presses her lips together. “ _Was_ not his only kin.”

“Was? What happened to the other?” 

The Magistragedy takes out a databook from her plocket and taps in a few commands. Handing it to Terezi, she says, “These are old pictures, but they serve our purposes.”

Terezi gives the screen a cautious lick. The pictures are, indeed, old, scratchy with age and obviously poor satellite reception. They were not taken from within a mile of the incident they observe. Still, the picture is intelligible: a dead brownblood, speared in the back, the wound weeping congealed ochre blood. On either side of the puncture, mucus-laced winglets sprout from his open back. 

“The avian gene is extinct,” Terezi says, dumbstruck.

“Until a moment ago, you thought the Summoner’s line was, too.” Kishar takes back the databook. “And anyway, your statement is not technically incorrect. Unless this putrid waste of trollflesh managed a bucket before his demise, it’s unlikely there will be any more winged abominations popping up in the future.” 

“Was he culled?”

“No. Not officially, anyway.” Her smile revels in its own cruelty. “Your defendant took care of that for us, quite neatly. Thank her for it, won’t you.” She shakes her head, closes the databook, tucks it away. “Tavros Nitram was not a memorable troll, and it is doubtful he would have been. All the same, I appreciate his death; it’s easier for lowbloods to rally around the like blooded. Much harder to make an idol from their oppressor’s class.” She lifts her face to the window, but her eyes do not move. The move is an aesthetic one, to demonstrate apathy, not borne from genuine fascination with her extensive view. “Did she tell you about Nitram?”

“She confessed to killing him.”

“She didn’t mention their matespritship? Understandable.”

Terezi’s bloodpusher constricts. “Matespritship,” she repeats.

“Red as your oculars, love.” Kishar pats Terezi’s shoulder and retreats to the chaise. “And the cull report — well, it’s a compelling testament to the ill-advised nature of red romance.”

“What did the cull report say?” Terezi doesn’t want to know. She knows that she needs to.

“A lover’s spat. He was angry, she was angrier. Apparently, he instigated it, or so she reported; at any rate, it concluded in an unfortunate divorce between his pelvic bone and his spinal column.” She hums with pleasure. “It was a beautiful death.”

Terezi falls into her chair.“A beautiful death,” she repeats.

“Dramatic, I mean. You try to build a movement around those pictures, Counselor, tell me how it goes.” Kishar speaks with triumphant vigor, ignoring Terezi’s hesitance. “And then there was one.”

“Vriska.”

“Indeed.” She picks up her teacup again, dabs a finger in it to test temperature. Finding it to her liking, she takes another sip. “You can imagine my delight when the Colonel informed me of her capture.”

“I can only.” Terezi frowns. “And you ordered for her acquittal.”

“Do you find error in my logic, Counselor?” The Magistragedy crosses her legs, obviously enjoying herself. 

“Wouldn’t it be simpler to kill her?” The words scrape at Terezi’s throat as she says them. She ignores the ache. “Before she can start a movement of her own.” 

“Simpler, yes. But politics is rarely simple.” She twirls a tiny spoon through her cup. “A sentence means death; death is fast, and — to your credit — inarguably effective. She would be less trouble to me dead than alive, undoubtedly. But an acquittal, Lady Pyrope, would leave Serket in the hands of the Cruelest Bar. After being relieved of charges, it is hard imagine she would not feel indebted to the agent of her liberation; as compensation for her freedoms, she agrees to perform select favors, here and there, as necessary.” The Magistragedy taps her spoon on the edge of the cup and settles it on the saucer. “She is the lone descendant of the second most influential revolutionary in Alternian history. I do not believe she is unaware of the weight she carries. If she is condemned, so she is condemned; but all the same, to have her alive is infinitely more valuable than to carry her corpse.”

“You wanted to use her.”

“At last.” Kishar’s eyes glitter with amusement. “My _nefarious_ purposes revealed. Do they surprise you?” She doesn’t expect a serious answer. Terezi gives one anyway.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I suppose not.”

She envisions Vriska, waiting just outside the door, her back to the chambers. Sure in the conviction that Terezi would not betray her. Certain in the belief that Terezi would represent them both well, and willing to wait for her.

“Why do you need her?”

Kishar shrugs. “I like having chips on my side of the table.”

“No. Serket is a gamble, not a chip.” Terezi leans forward, over the table. “There’s another movement.”

The silver pendant presses heresy into her skin.

“There’s always a movement. Lowbloods love nothing so much as getting riled up.”

“A more important one, then. One that’s different.” She tucks the chain more securely beneath her collar under the guise of rubbing her neck. “One that’s gaining traction. You don’t want her as a _chip_. You’re afraid of making her a martyr.”

Kishar’s expression flattens. “Descendants are popping up like daisies, nowadays,” she says. “They speak of one on Alternia.”

“A descendant of whom?”

“Do not ask. It is high treason to say.” 

Terezi’s hand falls quickly from her neck. “Oh.”

“Yes. Do you understand why I want her alive, now?” Kishar folds her hands. “That Nitram died of a petty interpersonal squabble was nothing short of miraculous. God knows what two revolutionaries’ descendants would have done by now. I do not need the public spectacle of the execution of a third.”  


“But hardly anybody knows Vriska is related to Mindfang. Or that Mindfang was with the Summoner, in the first place.”

“And how do you know that?” Kishar's poise slips for a fraction of a second, and taught anxiety writes itself across her face. “That I am aware of those facts demonstrates that the information exists. In records. Ancient databases. Serket is not unknown, nor is the name of her ancestor a closely guarded secret; that the general population has been made to forget Aranea’s leveler tendencies is the fruit of centuries’ worth of historical revision and a good PR department.”

“So you want to puppeteer her.”

“I want to secure the Empire.” The Magistragedy knits her fingers. “I want you to _help_ me secure the Empire, Counselor.”

She struggles to think. She imagines Vriska, chaotic wild thing, so quick to climb into a legislacerator’s very recuperacoon, so quick to risk her own life. She who considers Terezi some lofty agent of righteousness, some _idealist_. Imagines blackmailing Vriska, and feels bile rise to the back of her throat.

“It wouldn’t work,” she says, at length. “Vriska doesn’t think that way. She wouldn’t comply with anything you asked her to do, even if you promised her a lifetime’s immunity.”

Kishar’s brow furrows. “Why?”

Terezi feels something twist itself in her bloodpusher.

“She’s a pirate,” she says. “She thinks that if she’s not playing by her own rules, she’s losing.”

Kishar’s mouth twists sourly. “An unfortunate mindset,” she says. “I had hoped her tenure with you would make her more amenable to cooperation with the law.”

“Is that why you sent her to me?” Terezi finds herself talking faster, talking harder. “Is that why you assigned me to her case? So I could talk her into working for the Bar?”

“You are known for your persuasiveness, Pyrope. Is it so hard to believe that I held ambitions of your success?”

Terezi barks a laugh. “Against Serket!” She rises, paces to and fro beside the table. “She’s havoc. She can’t be tricked, she can’t be taught, and she most certainly can’t be trained to heel on command. You’re dreaming of a pet revolutionary — you’re not going to get it, with her.”

“Are you telling me that if you asked her to help, right now, at risk of both her freedom and yours, she would begrudge you a favor?”

Terezi takes a breath to deny it, and pauses.

Magistragedy Kishar grins. It is a vicious thing. “Criminals do love attention.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“It means that if you throw them a bone, they’ll hand you their own exoskeleton. There are none so desperate for aid as the lawless.” She finishes her drink and sets the empty cup beside the pot. “Recite Tanset’s Second Law of Quadrants, Counselor.”

“No, thank you.”

Kishar looks up sharply.

Terezi stands and hefts her grip on her cane. “I am not a Neophyte. I do not require schoolfeeding. I know Tanset’s Rule of Quadrants, and the Stockholm Corollary. That does not make it appropriate to use the rules of attachment to _manipulate —_ ”

“A prisoner into admiring her captor? That wasn’t my doing.” 

Terezi chokes off mid-sentence.

“Vriska Serket violated no protocol,” Kishar argues. “I violated no protocol. If you nursed some sentiment for your defendant, it is no one’s fault but yours.”

“There is no sentiment.”

“No?” She nods at the door. “If I ordered her to be murdered in front of you, would you not flinch?”

Terezi lifts her chin and clears her mind, grappling for a hold on her imagination. “I would not,” she says. She knows the question is not a rhetorical one. 

“If I ordered her to be beaten within an inch of her life, would you not beg for her?”

“I would not.”

“If I ordered you to kill her,” the Magistragedy says, tilting her head speculatively, “would you not argue?”

“Only to preserve the color of your furniture,” Terezi says through gritted teeth, contemplating the shape of the bloodstain she would create by cutting open Kishar’s throat, “Your Cruelty.”

She laughs. “Reassuring.”

Terezi eases her grip on her cane, just slightly.

“I don’t know if you’re lying to yourself or me,” she adds, “but that you are willing to do it at all, to the point, is reassuring.”

Terezi turns away abruptly, paces to the other end of the room. “Never mind,” she snaps. “What do you want me to do? If you want me to control her, I — I can’t. If I’m emotionally compromised, then it’s clear I won’t be able to manipulate her successfully.”

“You make a persuasive argument. I’ve reconsidered.”

“ _Reconsidered?”_

Kishar snaps her fingers again. The lowblood servant bobs into the room, gathers the tea tray, and scuttles out, all without looking once at either legislacerator. Terezi watches them go and a deep, gnawing fear carves itself into her chest. 

“Unfortunately,” Kishar adds, “my reconsideration does not fall in your favor.”

It’s hard to imagine a situation any less in Terezi’s favor. She doesn’t doubt the universe is capable of creating one.

“What?”

“Did you never ask yourself why the Church wanted Serket so badly? I’m sure she gave you the story about the Peregrenic Wars; I’m sure that you, not being an entirely unintelligent troll, realized how disproportionate the crime was to the reaction she has garnered.” The Magistragedy stretches more comfortably onto the chaise. “To the point: her heritage is not a secret among the Church’s aristocracy.”

“What do the juggalos want with the descendant of Mindfang?”

Kishar’s gaze darts to Terezi’s face, irate. “They’re not all drunken idiots,” she snaps. “Much as you and I would prefer them to be. If the Church were run by the people it generally attracts, it never would progressed past a weak cultist phenomenon. No.” She pinches her sleeve and draws it back.

A purple tattoo is knit into the skin over her wrist, two sloppy dots and a wide slash of a smile. A broad clown nose wedged between them. The lines are uneven and smell painful, a discoloration of rotting grapes against otherwise flawless grey skin.

Kishar’s leers at it bitterly. “An initiation rite,” she says. “The Church and the State, Pyrope. Every Magistragedy serves both.” She drops her sleeve back over the tattoo, takes a moment to compose herself. 

“However,” she says, voice considerably brighter. “So long as one keeps the High Priests happy, and tosses them a Neophyte to torment now and then, they are generally glad to let the Bar do as it pleases. It is our exceptional good luck that they have not taken a closer interest in law enforcement than they have; in the interests of maintaining that distance, I have been forced to make concessions.”

“Concessions,” Terezi repeats dully. The jagged joker’s smile has branded itself into her mind’s eye. 

“Indeed. And their view of hemocaste politics is considerably less sophisticated than ours.” She heaves a disappointed sigh. “They think the best route to quashing rebellion is to kill Mindfang’s descendant and be over with it. I tell them that they’re fast on their way to making martyrs out of molehills, but do they listen? No. No nuance, the subjugglators. But what can you expect?” She shakes her head. “Anyway. They want Serket’s head on a platter, and given what you’re telling me, I don’t have a decent excuse not to give it to them.”

“No,” Terezi blurts.

“No?” Kishar lifts an eyebrow. “Can you tell me otherwise?”

“She’s not under Church jurisdiction. She was captured by a ruffiannihilator squad, not a subjugglator unit, so under the Most Mirthful and Delightful Division of Powers Act —”

“I know the law,” Kishar says, and her voice floods through the room. It reduces Terezi to a dumbstruck statue of a troll. “Do not presume to tell me my work, Counselor.”

“Your work.”

“Yes. My law.” Kishar removes her glasses, folds them neatly on the table, and rises. Brushing aside one of the folds of her robes, she reveals a sheath strapped to her waist — a blade almost as long as Terezi’s body, a hilt gilded with gold and rubies. “The law is its executors,” she intones. “We are the law incarnate. There is no rule but the rule we uphold.”

“That’s not true.”

“You were endearingly naïve when you entered the conversation. It grows less endearing when you try to argue your ignorance.” Kishar rests a hand on her hilt. “This is the universe, Pyrope. Unless you are as blind as your medical records would assert, you will realize that sometimes, life isn’t fair.”

“Life isn’t. The law _is_.” Terezi threads her fingers into her hair. The vacancy in her chest is growing, swallowing her innards like a black hole consumes the galaxy around it. “The law must be. The law — the law is _just_ —”

“The law doesn’t _exist!”_ The Magistragedy draws her sword and stabs it into the floor, its quiver a lone movement in the room’s sudden stillness. “The law is words in a document in a datafile that a fraction of the universe has access to. You concede that life isn’t fair — these are the rules by which life is played. We do not create order. We keep chaos at bay.” She points to the window.“Those _buffoons_ were wedded to our legal system over two hundred sweeps ago because otherwise, they would have eradicated any semblance of civilization they could get their filthy painted hands on. Is that just? No. It’s necessary. And so it _is_ just.”

“Bonds,” Terezi says.

“What?”

“The law is _bonds.”_ She unsheathes her blade, holds it evenly before her. “It is a compact. _You_ broke the law, so you’re trying to justify your error by claiming that it doesn’t exist.”

Kishar tugs her sword from the floor and sheathes it. “It doesn’t matter,” she says, suddenly tired. “If you can persuade nine juggalos of the virtue of justice, I’ll hand over my title there and then.”

Cold steals over Terezi’s spine. “What do you mean?”

“I did my best for you,” the Magistragedy says. Her scent at last reveals itself, faint and acrid, smacking of regret. “You will have a trial. I could not bear to let her go without at least an effort on the Bar’s behalf. Despite your infuriating naïveté, you will put our best foot forward, I believe.”

“A subjugglator trial,” Terezi says, half hysterical. “That’s a good joke.”

“Mm. That’s why they agreed to it, I think.” Magistragedy Kishar sits heavily on her chaise and turns her head away. “They’ll be coming to get her, presently.”

“ _Now?”_

“Who can say? They run on their own time.” She drums her fingers on the furniture’s arm. “Best of luck with it, anyway, Counselor. I hope they don’t kill either of you, for what it’s worth.”

Terezi hardly hears her.

She shoves her thumb at the door’s reader and wedges herself through the opening as soon as it’s wide enough to fit her.

Subjugglators look as out of place on the Magistragedy’s ship as a helmsman at a highblood function. There are just two of them, but they fill the corridor completely, hulking shapes blotting out the fluorescents; black streaks drag on the floor in their wake, ash and soot and various crusted viscera. They are silent.

Vriska faces them down, pistols drawn, shouting threats with increasing volume the closer they get. The legislacerative team stands to the side, swords sheathed, clearly on edge but making no move to stop the invaders.

“Stop,” Terezi says, and it comes out too quietly — “ _Stop!_ ” 

The subjugglators never so much as turn their head. They’re focused on Vriska, who backs into the wall with increasing profanity. 

“You best hold right fucking there,” she calls, “or I’ll blow your pans out.”

Terezi plants herself between Vriska and the subjugglators. “You are out of your jurisdiction,” she insists, arms outstretched. “This is _my prisoner!”_

One of the juggalos opens their mouth and speaks with a voice like sandpaper on rusted metal. “You’re in the motherfucking way,” she says, “teal-tint sister.”

“Yes, and I intend to continue as such until you start seeing sense!”

The subjugglator’s ganderbulbs flicker from yellow to red and back again. The corridor seems to darken, shapes and colors spinning with dizzying force, and then it shrinks, walls pressing in against her. The world contorts into grotesque new forms. Scents drift from without her reach, and then she is really blind, disparate from any kind of communication at all; shadow-creatures scrabble at the corners of her mind, hungry for purchase, sinking their fangs into her thinkpan and seeding venomous panic. 

Terezi brandishes her sword in front of her, as if it can do anything to protect her from the perversion of reality itself. Somewhere, Vriska is shouting, but she can’t _understand,_ she can barely wrap her head around her own thoughts, can scarcely remember what she left the Magistragedy’s chamber to do in the first place. All that she understands is the sacred, animalistic impulse of panic, of flight, of _fear._

A hand wraps itself around her throat and she’s flung at the wall, breaking the trance. The collision shoves her shoulder out of alignment with the rest of her body, inducing a truly exquisite flare of pain, and she drops her sword. Her arm dangles limply from her socket, but she can smell clearly again, and adrenaline numbs her shoulder’s ache. 

Vriska wrestles in the subjugglator’s hands, lifted aloft, feet thrashing. Her guns lie on the floor. Her hands scrabble at their vise-like grips on her neck, her shoulders — she screams, a sound more rage than fear. Terezi grabs her sword with her left hand and leaps for the left subjugglator, making a desperate slash for his face. 

He moves with preternatural speed. Ducking the sword, he drops Vriska and flicks Terezi’s wrist — something shatters — and forces her to drop her sword. Vriska tumbles inelegantly to her knees, hand darting into her pocket, clenching a fistful of die.

The female subjugglator kicks her in the head, knocking her prostrate on the floor. The Fluorite Octet scatters and tumbles out of range. 

Vriska flips onto her back and a hand flies to her temple, eyes desperately seeking the subjugglator’s, seeking a psychic hold. Terezi shoves herself to her knees.

The subjugglator’s face stills, concentration flickering for a fraction of a second, and Vriska looks triumphant.

Then the other clown steps forward and rips her arm from her body.

She screams. The sound is ragged and wretched with pain.

Terezi grabs her sword with her injured hand, ignoring the ache, and charges. The female subjugglator turns, lip curled with exasperation, and her club connects with Terezi’s jaw.

Everything fades.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Will wisdom we learn as our minds they do burn_  
>  _All the ties to naivety and youth_  
>  _To adults we grow and maturity shows_  
>  _Oh, the terrifying rarity of truth_  
>  —Troll Bastille, _Haunt_


	8. The Trial of Vriska Serket

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“Alternian trials were a paradoxical affair. Trials are generally founded on the ideals of order, justice, ritual, and rule; Alternian affairs were rarely any of the above, and certainly never where juggalos were involved. Still, the Cruelest Bar solved the issue with its usual grace and spectacular doublethink. To survive a legal hearing, both legislacerator and client had to progress without being murdered by His Honorable Tyranny or the often bored (and, by extent, violent) jury. The chief commandment issued to young legislacerators, upon ascension to the Bar, was this: be lawful, yes, but chief above all, be entertaining.”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

Terezi has not left her cellblock for fifteen nights.

She woke up on the first night feeling like her face was mincemeat and her body was on the fast track to it. A Church mediculler had wrapped her wrist with some kind of filmy, slime-laced black gauze, keeping her hand numb and painless, for the most part. Her dislocated shoulder, however, remained an issue. She had to reset it herself, pinning her limp arm between her legs and shoving the joint back into its socket. Her screams brought the guards to her door.

Otherwise, however, a black ocular and a broken wrist are relatively light fare when dealing with the likes of the Church. Terezi is, part of the time, optimistic enough to concede that the subjugglators were disproportionately gentle with her. The other part of the time she spends swearing out the Church and all its followers with every word in every language she can recall, and then inventing a few, just for creativity’s sake.

The pendant is still around her neck, hidden under her shirt. When she discovers this, she is relieved enough to consider weeping, but does not, out of self-respect. 

On the third night, after she runs her throat hoarse, they slid a husktop and a databook through the door of her cell with her morning meal. 

“Hey, there,” she cried, rapping on the cell door with her cane. “Hey! What’s this for?”

Her guard turned, smile benign. “Work,” he said, and trudged away.

“Work? _Work?_ ” Terezi clung to the bars lining the door’s window. “Come back!”

It was no use. You couldn’t bid them to do anything, subjugglators. It was hard to say that they’d heard anything at all, most of the time.

The husktop has limited functions. There’s no Trollian client, or the software to download such, so communication outside of the cell is impossible. There is, however, access to Alternian legal databases, as well as a restricted internet provider and several document programs, one of which is equipped with the template for a case brief. (Terezi hasn’t needed to use templates since her first sweep at the Academy. She disdains the idea.) 

Terezi understands several things from the provision of the husktop:

  1. They intend her to argue a trial, and have restrained her, presumably, so she will not flee the ship before such a trial can be had. A blessing despite the conditions of her imprisonment, for without it they would have been unlikely to bother keeping her alive.
  2. The law still has some sway, even here, under the Church’s domain.
  3. Vriska is alive.



The first two are not so important as the third, which pursues her even after she has retired the husktop and returned to the small, weak recuperacoon provided. She evaluates and reevaluates her logic, inspects her syllogisms for flaw, and yet returns to the same conclusion — perhaps buoyed by irrational hope, perhaps not — that they cannot have killed Vriska. For one thing, she cannot imagine why they would bother holding Terezi here if they had; for another, if they had murdered her, they would have probably made Terezi watch. One does not kill criminals without ceremony.

So she goes to work.

For ten nights, she does nothing but write. Research and write. She finds precedents. She finds cases. She works her fingers to aching nubs drafting and redrafting her opening argument, rearranging the presentation of evidence, scrupulously examined for precedent.

She comes up at the end of it with nothing.

There is _no_ precedent, which is the problem; Vriska is guilty. She _is._ By the law that she trespassed, her death sentence is fair. And yet —

Terezi can’t argue for it.

She can’t let her die. 

This fact worms its way into her thinkpan over the course of the week she spends feverishly preparing for the trial, inviolate, inarguable. She made a promise.

_You will not die. You will not be culled. You will go before a jury of the Alternian Empire, Vriska Serket, and you will walk out of the block a free troll._

Terezi hates lying. Lying outright is the weak defense of someone ill-trained in falsehood. She can’t be made a liar this way.

_I think you’d run your best friend clean through with that cane, if you thought they were breaking the law, without losing a day’s sleep over it._

She wastes an hour of precious time thinking about Vriska’s last words to her, wondering if they will be her last words to anybody. She wastes another thinking about the hell she’s undoubtedly giving her jailers, and smiling about it. 

_My name’s my bond. Once you have it, your back’s mine to protect for so long as I’ve warm blood in me._

Terezi isn’t a gamblignant. She doesn’t hold herself to the standards of gamblignants. She refuses to compare herself, even in the abstract, to a gamblignant.

But she knows that Vriska wouldn’t let her die. Vriska never did let her die; even when it was plausible for her to do so, even when it would have been sensible and admissible — Gamzee, the mercenaries — Vriska never ran. She held her ground and pointed her pistol at whatever needed shooting and spat in the face of good sense. She was horrifically insensible and had an extra adrenal gland where her common sense should have been and Terezi _cannot_ let her die.

Maybe this is her failing. Her professors had said that legislacerators all have failings; Terezi had thought, at the time, that it was the befuddled mutterings of people too old to do their job well anymore. Perhaps her failing has just made itself apparent; Vriska is one death too many, one death too much. Or, perhaps, it’s just Vriska.

The sixteenth night of her captivity, she strides up to the front of the cellblock and beats her cane against the door until the guards come.

It takes seven full minutes of earsplitting noise to summon even one subjugglator, and he moseys up to her door with mild curiosity, lacking a modicum of irritation. “Come now, little sister,” he says, not unkindly, “what the motherfuck are you all up n’ doing that for?”

“I would like to be released,” Terezi says primly, and then, politely, adds, “please.”

“Shit, man, I don’t think you know how this works. See, when you’re locked up in there, it’s so as you don’t get your leave on, you dig?” He scratches his head behind his ears, looking almost embarrassed for her. “Ain’t exactly a courtesy trip.”

“No, I understand. I’m not asking to leave permanently.” She presses her face up against the bars. “I am invoking the right of legal advisor to have counsel with her client! Take me to Vriska Serket at your soonest convenience.” She plasters on a winning, guileless smile.

He glances up and down the hallway. “Nobody done told me if that’s a thing, really.”

“Oh, it’s very real! Real as you or I, Mr. Grape Soda. You can check the legal texts.” She’s not _lying._ Imperial law describes a right of counsel between defendant and legislacerator; it’s usually not the legislacerator invoking the right, but the texts don’t explicitly eliminate the possibility, so Terezi takes it as a go-ahead.

“Aw, see, you know I can’t do that. There are so goddamn many.”

“Why, you’re right. There _are_ so goddamn many. Which is why we train an entire sect of our population to read and comprehend those texts, for the precise purpose of educating the less well-read on their content and nature.” Terezi slides her glasses down her nose seriously. “That’s me, if you haven’t caught on yet.”

“If you’re lyin’, though, it’s my ass on the plate, lawbug. Don’t wanna be the guy who let out the deadly ass prisoner, you dig?”

“Completely.” She smiles wider, lifting her lip over her fangs conspicuously. “No one wants to be _that guy._ But consider: it would be equally damning to be the guy who refused a sacred rite of legal counsel, thereby contaminating the procedure of trial by jury, and violating a divine agreement between the Magistragedy and the Grand Highblood.” She’s really bullshitting it, now. She has no idea whom the Magistragedy made the agreement with. She assumes it’s one of the higher-ups, and she also assumes that the average subjugglator isn’t keyed in to Church politics to the extent that they’d know, either.

He tosses another wary look up and down the corridor.

“You can check with a supervisor, if you’d like,” Terezi adds, and retreats back into her cell.

Minutes later, a trio of subjugglators open the door and emerge with a pair of prongcuffs.

“Ten motherfucking minutes,” says the foremost.

 

* * *

 

Terezi considered herself to be in poor shape. She clearly misunderstood the meaning of the term.

Vriska’s healthy layer of fat has been whittled away to a slim coating over jagged bones and malformed cartilage. Her nose has been broken, multiple times, and reset incorrectly, changing the shape of her face — not so foreign that Terezi wouldn’t recognize her, but enough to give lie to her mugshot. Dark blue dries under her nose, in the corners of her eyes, flushes under what skin hasn’t been broken. She’s lost her overcoat, boots, sword. Die, presumably left to whatever dark corridor of the _Victory_ they were lost in. This isn’t the worst part.

The worst part is the broad metal band clamped to the back of her head, set amidst a long stripe of shaven hair. Thick and surgically affixed to her cranium, bearing the Empress’ company’s insignia. It’s smaller than the ones they use on yellowbloods, but it’s no less recognizable. Vriska’s curled herself into a corner of her cell, her hands fidgeting with its edges, with the roots of the hair surrounding the shaven patch.

Her hand has been replaced with a bionic prosthetic, and an impressive one, at that; its smooth, dark steel matches well the color of her skin, clamps folding seamlessly over her shoulder and wrapping around her neck for better leverage. She doesn’t move it as much as her flesh arm, perhaps unused to its heft and weight. 

“You can leave,” Terezi tells the guards. They don’t. One of them shuffles their feet and glances at the doorway anxiously, as if considering it, but remains by his peers.

“Maybe I wasn’t clear,” she clarifies. “The text details a right to _private_ counsel, you see. So for you to be here is very much illegal. If you want to explain your choice to threaten the legitimacy of the trial to your superiors, feel free.”

With several resentful glares, they file out, only to linger just outside the cellblock. Terezi marches over and shuts the door, seals the window.

Vriska coughs. 

“Is the room under surveillance?” 

She shakes her head.

“How do you know?”

She tips back her head and speaks. The voice crawls out of the back of her throat, raspy. “They don’t come unless you yell for ’em,” she croaks.

“All right. We don’t have much time.” Terezi sits down opposite her on the floor, ignoring the puddle of sopor slime beside her. Vriska’s room, unlike hers, doesn’t have a recuperacoon in it, probably to prevent suicidal sopor overdose. It’s a practice in most legislacerative prisons.

“What the hell —” Vriska’s eyes close, for a long moment, and then she pries them open again. The rings are bloodshot blue. “Why are _you_ here?”

“Legislacerator-client privilege, and a lot of bravado. That’s not a question that needs asking, presently.” 

“Well, fuck, why don’t you try asking one, then.”

Terezi reaches out for the platelet behind her skull, hesitates, fingers twitching. “What —”

“Is that motherfucker? Yeah, let me know if you figure that one out.” Vriska’s own hand probes the edge of the device like a wriggler picking at a scab. “I can’t — it’s a psychic depressant. Of some kind. Keeps me from pulling any telepathic bullshit on the guards, because they’re a bunch of paranoid _fucks_ who don’t understand how _powers work —”_

“You almost had one of them under sway on the _Victory.”_

“No, they were stunned because they didn’t expect a blueblood to have psychics and it spooked them. I didn’t do shit. But because they’ve all got the pans of fucking _barkbeasts_ they figured they’d slap a plate in the back of my head, just in _fucking_ case.” She raps on it. Her knuckles echo hollowly. “I can’t —” She tilts her head down, breathes evenly. “I can’t see.”

“You can’t _see?”_

“No. Not like — not like you, exactly. I can see with my eyes. But there’s this entire dimension of like, thought. That I can’t get to. I’ve always been able to get to it, and now I can’t.” She breathes quicker. “I haven’t been able to.”

Terezi rubs her thumb over the plate’s logo. Vriska inclines her head to offer better access. “I’ve seen these,” Terezi says. Adds, “They’re surgically implanted, but it’s a quick job to remove it. They’re not necessarily permanent.”

“Oh, how nice. Are you going to ring up a mediculler, have them make a house call on a juggalo ship?”

“I was trying to comfort you.”

“A for effort. Maybe work on the ‘imminent death by clown’ thing first, though? Just a note.”

“I _have_ been working on it. Incessantly.” Terezi pulls out her databook. “I have your case almost prepared. I just need —”

“My _case?”_ Vriska’s eyebrows arch. “You’re still obsessed with that shit?”

“That shit is the only way either of us is walking out of here, so yes, I am!”

“Put aside that your chances are bull fucking shit, they’re gonna _let_ you argue it?”

“It was part of an agreement with the Magistragedy,” she says, and her lips thin. “A bargain for our detainment. In exchange for following the procedures of the courtblock.”

Vriska sits back, jaw agape. Then she starts cackling.

“That’s great,” she says frankly. “Oh, man. I get why they did it. That’s fucking hilarious.”

“I have a decent case,” Terezi insists. “I just need you to confirm —”

“You know, I take back everything I ever said about juggalo humor, when they get it right, they _really_ get it right —”

“If you have a better plan for escape, please —”

“We’re both going to die! That’s nice! And we’re going to die by _trial._ A short goddamn straw you drew, by the way, getting stuck with me on here, maybe the Magistragedy wanted you to suffer, what did you do to piss _her_ off, I wonder —”

“Shut up and _listen —”_

“Maybe they’ll give us a joint execution, make it a real party —”

“Why did you kill Tavros Nitram?” 

Vriska’s mouth snaps shut and she sways, staring blankly at her knees.

“You know.”

“You told me he was a friend. Someone from FLARP. He wasn’t. Why did you lie?”

“I didn’t lie. I never lied to you.”

“You gave me information that you knew would lead me to draw an erroneous conclusion and the distinction between that and outright falsehood is a semantic one at best — don’t try that line with a legislacerator.”

The words fall from Terezi’s tongue like notes of a violin solo, high and quick and cold.

“I didn’t mean to lie to you,” Vriska clarifies, flexing the fingers of her prosthetic hand. She cradles her knees against her chest, her frame made to seem smaller by the hunch of her spine. 

“If you believed that,” Terezi says, “you wouldn’t have lied.”

She turns her back on Vriska, which is useless — she can smell her just as well, facing the other way — but it makes her feelings clear. 

“And furthermore,” she adds, “you are still not telling me the truth.”

“It’s not that simple.”

It’s too far.

Terezi whirls on her, thrusting the datebook in her face, in lieu of a cane to brandish. “I am your _legislacerator,”_ she shouts. “There is nothing too complicated, nothing _too insignificant_ , and nothing that I should have to find out second-hand from the Magistragedy! I am here to _protect_ you, which I cannot do if I don’t know the notably _not_ insignificant fact that as a consequence of some lover’s quarrel, you killed the descendant of the Summoner!” 

She breathes hard and massages the bridge of her nose. Vriska presses herself further against the wall, subtly, eyes wide.

“Not to mention your hatchmate,” she adds tiredly, which stuns Vriska. 

“My —”

“Mindfang and the Summoner. It-couple of the First Summoner’s Revolution, apparently.” Terezi snickers without humor. “He killed her. But you killed his descendant, so I guess that particular revenge cycle tied itself up neatly.”

“My hatchmate,” she says, and then, “ _Tavros?”_

“Very Troll Shakespearian. If I was less pissed at you not for telling me you were matesprits, I would find it all truly compelling.”

“Look,” Vriska says. “I — oh, _don’t_ make a joke —”

“I wasn’t going to make a blind joke.”

Terezi’s tone makes apparent her lack of amusement. Vriska nods apologetically. “I didn’t tell you,” she says, measuring her words carefully, “because it was irrelevant.”

“Irrelevant.”

“Yeah. I mean, I know. You don’t think it was. But what would it have changed? It’s not like it made any difference, in the end.” She folds her arms over her knees. “I still killed him. He’s still dead.”

“But it wasn’t to feed your lusus,” Terezi snaps.

“No! No, it wasn’t. It was because he figured out what I was doing, and — and he knew that I was going to keep doing it, and he tried to put a stop to it. He tried to kill _me!”_ She stabs a finger at her chest. “It was — okay, it wasn’t self-defense, he stopped trying, after I beat him up a little, but — he wasn’t going to let it drop! He was such a dumbass, he never let things go! He’d have kept trying to kill me, to save lives, and I — fuck! Maybe everyone would’ve been better off if he’d succeeded, but I’d sooner wax pale for the Handmaid than just _give_ it to him! He wasn’t — he was weak! I _deserved_ to survive! And he — he was —”

The anger drains out of Terezi. In its places settles something warm, heavy, and desperately uncomfortable to carry in her chest. She wishes it would go away, and let the irritation back; it was so much more convenient to hold. 

“Did you know he was a mutant?”

It’s about as level as she can make her voice, at the moment.

“What?” It jars Vriska from her rant. “No. I — well, he had this thing with animals, but that’s normal for lowbloods, his caste gets it all the time.”

“His _wing_ mutation, Vriska.”

She gapes. “Tavros had a wing mutation?”

Terezi knits her brows. “You didn’t _know_?”

“It wasn’t like — we didn’t really pail, okay? There was some — fuck, I dunno how much detail you want here, _petting_ —”

“None! The answer is none of the detail! I want none of it!” Terezi’s hands fly up. “That wasn’t the question I was asking. Please. What I meant was — you must’ve seen his back, when you were moving the body.”

“Moving the body?” She looks genuinely baffled. Terezi’s bloodpusher constricts.

“For your lusus.”

Vriska gags. “Fuck,” she croaks. “No. _Tavros?_ I wouldn’t feed — he was my fucking _matesprit_. Didn’t always like him, and I downright hated him, sometimes, but — he wasn’t _hers,_ that’s for damn sure. I could barely look at the fucking corpse, after the Octet did its thing, you think I could’ve hauled it eight miles —”

Terezi’s bloodpusher starts beating freely again. “No,” she says, with feeling. “No, not to your matesprit, I don’t think you could.”

“That’s right.” Vriska leans back against the wall. “And Tavros, by the way — he’s all I lied about. Just so you know.” 

“Right.”

“Like, I realize you have no reason to believe me. But I’m telling the truth.”

“Noted,” Terezi says, trying not to feel relieved, and failing spectacularly.

They waste another half minute of their time that way, silently, observing parts of the cellblock that are not each other.

“What’s that?” Vriska points at the databook under Terezi’s arm; Terezi removes it, reverie broken.

She extends it to Vriska. “We need to make your plea.”

“And I need to do something for that?”

“Yes. I’ve drafted it, of course, no need to worry there. Sign your name and it’ll be legally viable.”

She takes the pad and examines it, scrolling through. “What am I pleading?”

“Guilty, but with a number of caveats.” Terezi settles against the wall beside her and starts ticking things off her fingers. “For example, there’s the technical argument, which would be strong enough to get you dismissed in any real court of law — that’s threefold, by the way, although it’s labeled under ‘Section One’ — and then there’s the pathological argument, which I’ll be the first to admit isn’t grounded under the strongest of precedents, but is legitimate nonetheless. And then there’s —”

“Pyrope,” Vriska groans, knocking her head gently against the wall. The plate echoes with a quiet _clang._ “Why do you fucking _care.”_

“I don’t want to die,” Terezi says shortly. “And sorry if you’ve given up on that endeavor, but —”

“Are you a dumbass? They’re not going to kill you!”

“Of course they are! What, you think they’re going to make a pit stop after your execution and toss me out on my ass at the nearest star system? No! They don’t have room for legislacerators on their ship!” Terezi grabs the databook back, signs Vriska’s name for herself, shoves it into her satchel. 

“Then try and fucking escape. Find Aradia, find the others, grab a pod and jet the fuck out.”

“Assuming Aradia wants anything to do me, after what happened on the _Vagrant,”_ Terezi points out, and Vriska looks away.

“Yeah, well. Hard choices, you know? She’ll understand, with time. They all do. And if — if she’s dead, then, well, you owe it to her to keep going. It’ll be easy, pretend you’re abdicating, tell them you want to run back to the Magistragedy. You’ll have a better chance fighting your way out than in court.”

“They don’t let their prisoners carry weapons, Vriska!”

“You know, if I thought for a second you couldn’t bluff your way through an audience with the Empress, that argument might hold some weight.”

“I can’t bluff my way through six sets of armed guards, funnily enough, I had to go through three supervisor checks before I could even talk to you!”

“So get creative. Work at it. If you’d stop wasting your pan-power on this shitstorm of a trial —”

Terezi jumps to her feet and paces the length of the cellblock. It’s barely long enough for three complete strides. Vriska watches her, arms folded sullenly.

“ _Why,”_ she demands, “are you so insistent that I _don’t_ save your life?”

“If I thought you had half a fucking chance,” Vriska sneers, “I’d be all for it, trust me. But I’d rather you didn’t die because you were a dumbass with a big bloodpusher.”

“It’s my choice.”

“I’m not gonna fucking die knowing you could’ve lived if you weren’t such an easily attached—” 

“Easily attached! You’re my defendant! That’s — that’s all —”

“Your defendant,” Vriska mimics. “Oh, yeah, forgot how legislacerators all share slime with their defendants, it’s why they’re are _so_ massively popular. Conciliatory studs, you guys.” She claps a few times, slowly, mockingly.

Terezi’s hands itch for her cane.

“Fuck you,” she says. It’s a little numb.

“What, are you mad? Regretting your choice to die for this piece of shit over here? Go on, let me have it. Let me have it. C’mon.” Vriska shoves herself to her feet, unstable, leaning on the wall for balance, but upright. Her clothes fall limp around her frame, and the fury drains out of Terezi. Vriska, noticing, fumes.

“Go on! Pull that stick out of your nook and tell me what you’re really thinking. Why are you really doing this? This isn’t about justice. This isn’t about what’s right. The law? Please. You’re here because you’re a stubborn asshole and you don’t know when to quit. I’m your pet project, right? I’m your _test of skill!_ See if you can get the pirate asshole acquitted, Counselor, there’s no way they’ll be able to turn you down for baristerror then!”

“You’re an idiot,” Terezi says flatly.

“Yeah? Well, you stuck around with me, so who’s worse, huh? God, even the worst gamblignant is smart enough to know when to jump ship, but you can’t even manage that. Like a barnacle on my ass, I’ll tell you that. Apparently, they teach you everything in that Academy except when to fucking walk away.”

“Oh my God.”

“Any other lawbug in the galaxy would’ve put me out of my goddamn misery by now, but _you_ keep on going. Are you a sadist? A masochist? Do you take such fucking pleasure in both of us suffering for as long as trollishly possible?”

Terezi grabs her by the collar and wrenches her down to eye level.

“I’m pale for you,” she says, “you moron.”

Vriska’s mouth moves wordlessly.

“Oh,” she says, at length.

“‘Oh’ indeed.” Terezi releases Vriska and pulls out her databook, puttering around on it to give the impression that she’s doing something.

“I mean. Why?”

“You’re serious. Do you want me to whip out a speech, or would something lifted from a pale porno do the trick?”

“It’s not like that. I’m. Fuck.”

“You’re fuck. Surprisingly accurate description of the situation, actually, I’m glad you voiced it.”

“Stop it,” Vriska complains halfheartedly, leaning against the wall. “I’m processing.”

“We’ve got four minutes. Do it faster.”

“For someone with a pale crush on me, you’re not very nice.”

“If I’m ever _nice_ , Captain, you can take it as divine confirmation that I’m being mind-controlled by a malevolent entity and should be culled on the spot.”

“Noted.” The corner of Vriska’s lip twitches. “So, you’re, like. Nursing hard diamonds. For _me.”_

“‘Nursing hard diamonds’ is an egregious overstatement.” Terezi ignores the heat in her cheeks. “You’re really harping on something that’s relatively insignificant to the overall situation.”

“I’d prefer to talk about something that cheers me up instead of my oncoming doom. Sue me.” 

“If we get out of this, I just might.” Terezi cocks her head. “So —”

“So?”

“Not to bog our conversation down with romantic drama. But.”

“Oh. _Oh.”_ Vriska’s hand traces the back of her depressant plate. “Uh. Shit.”

“Shit?”

“It’s not that I don’t — this is like, the worst of all possible times, you realize.”

“I realize.” Terezi adjusts her glasses. “It’s also the only time.” 

Vriska runs a hand over her metal shoulder, scrubbing at the slime stains. She deliberately averts her eyes. “Well, uh. I don’t think I’m . . . I hope I’m not killing you, here, by saying I’m. I don’t think I am. So, like. If you were looking for reciprocality, or whatever, I mean, I’m sorry, I really am —”

“You don’t need to be sorry.”

“No, I — well, I don’t need to be, but I am. You seem — and I _like_ you, which is a goddamn miracle, right, I don’t really like people, at all, most of the time — so — it’s this fucking quadrilateral system of romance, man, makes it a pain in the ass to sort out mushy shit —”

Terezi snickers.

She brandishes a finger. “Hey,” she insists. “Hey. Here I am, trying to offer a dignified-ass rejection —”

“You’re not rejecting anything, Vriska. I said I was pale for you. I didn’t exactly assail you with demands for an impromptu pile.”

This makes her flush. “Well,” she says hotly. “Usually —”

“Usually? In pale porn, you mean?” Terezi is, despite her own expectation, thoroughly enjoying herself. “We’re hardly moirail material, either of us. You wanted an explanation of why I stay. There it is. Put aside the fact that there’s no other option for me, besides a suicidal escape attempt —”

“Don’t give me that shit. You could talk your way through ten times the juggalos on this ship —”

“Interrupt me again and I’ll drub you, cane or no.”

“Noted.”

“So I stay.” Terezi taps the databook. “The most eloquent pale overture I ever wrote, I’ll have you know.” Her smile is wry. It stings, a little, but not as much as she thought it would — being rebuffed. 

“Huh.” Vriska examines her. “And you’re not. You’re not pissed or anything. You’re okay.” 

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“You’ve never been pale for anyone, have you, Vriska?”

Her jaw drops, and she closes it again, sharply. “No,” she says. Her tone is curt. “Never had the time.”

Terezi puts aside the statement’s glaring logical flaw for the time being. Now is not the moment. If ever there will even be a moment, this is certainly not it. “Maybe you will be, someday,” Terezi suggests. “Then it’ll make sense.”

“Try to be a little more pretentious, Ampora’s not jealous yet.”

Terezi puts away the databook and ignores the jab. It’s well-meant. It’s an attempt, in her own, misguided way, to break the ice. “We’re almost through ten minutes,” she remarks. “Any statements? Any great breakthroughs you’ve been keeping secret?”

Vriska shrugs. “You know all there is.”

“That’s a good one. Crack a few of those during the trial, they might just let you go.” Terezi sighs. “Can’t hurt your case, anyway.” She makes for the door.

“Hey,” Vriska says. “Well. Wait.” 

Terezi lifts an eyebrow.

“If it was gonna be anyone,” she begins, and Terezi cuts her off.

“You told me once,” she says, “that your last words mattered to you.”

“Well, I said I wouldn’t let them be something shitty. Guess you can deduce from that what you like.”

“A needless clarification. Do they matter?”

“Sure.” She massages the steel shoulder a bit before realizing what she’s doing, and dropping her hand. “Guess so.”

“Right.” Terezi rests her hand on the doorknob. “Mine matter to me, too. So if I’m going to die defending you —”

“You don’t _have to—”_

_“As I will,_ if I must,” Terezi says, louder, “you should at least do me the service of not making me listen to yours.”

Vriska tilts her head quizzically.

“Therefore,” Terezi adds, “there will be no ‘if there was ever going to be,’ ‘if I had,’ or, Handmaid forbid, ‘in another life’s. I won’t hear them.”

“Are you threatening me for being poetic?”

“Is it working?”

Vriska lifts her hands and snorts. “Fine. Sure.”

“See you later, then,” Terezi says. She opens the door. The subjugglators crowd her at once.

Vriska laughs softly. 

“Unlikely,” she says. The door swings shut before she finishes the word.

 

* * *

 

Three nights later, they come for her.

Bent over the dull light of her husktop, tongue dry from swiping at the screen, she hardly notices them until one beats their cane against the doorway and startles her. They’re dolled up in their finest, bone vests and black velvet over purple silk, permeating the cellblock with the scent of ink and sour plums. Formal wear, she supposes, for clowns. She’s still in her clothes from New Bellona — the tunic’s original color is almost blotted out by soot and grime. Only when she realizes that a group of subjugglators look more presentable than she does is Terezi irritated by her disarray.

A short, stocky clown with boisterous curls bound back in elastic steps forward and holds out a paper package. Terezi shuts the husktop and reaches for it, curious. 

“You come with us,” says the clown. She’s grinning, but that means nothing. They probably grin on the hanging platform.

Terezi rises and follows them.

They take her down a series of hallways, several of which they insist she hold her nose for — what they think they’ll accomplish that way, she hasn’t a clue — and into a small ablutionblock with a rusty ablution trap and a pewter loadgaper. Clutching the package to her chest, she turns to ask them about it, but they shut and lock the door behind her before she can.

Scowling, she tears open the paper. Layers of teal silk and heavy padding tumble from her arms, fresh and clean. She blinks, and then buries her nose in the fabric, inhaling sea salt and freshwater lilies and cool, evening mist. Teal smells like the Academy, uniquely so — smells like a new courtblock, a well-trained jury, a close friend.

She misses the Bar.

She misses, rather, what she thought the Bar was. She misses thinking the Bar was something great. She misses being able to respect the Bar, the security of something higher than herself. She misses wearing her own color, instead of nondescript browns, soot-stained blacks.

Buried inside the teal suit is a scarlet vest, a bloom of sugar-red flavor that makes her mouth water. She wastes a minute breathing in her new clothes, ignoring the implications of receiving them, and then gets to work preparing.

Her old clothes she strips away and tosses to the furthest corner of the respiteblock, to rot in undisturbed putridity. The ablution trap runs hot and cold at unpredictable intervals, so she grits her teeth, rinses quickly, and scrubs weeks’ worth of grease out of her hair. Dirt sluices off her body in broad streaks of black bleeding over the trap’s floor.

She puts on the uniform. 

First come the layers of protective padding, nigh-impenetrable sheets of bulletproof material that she binds around her chest and hips. The black bodysuit comes next, a long sheath of fabric covering every inch but her hands and face, knit from thick chiton to halt blades an inch from the skin. Only after she’s already dressed for a lesser troll’s occupation does she slip on the thin teal tunic, the slit skirt, and the red vest. Her belt includes a holster, woefully empty. She touches it absentmindedly, fingers itching.

She licks the mirror. A legislacerator sits in it, stare blank, presentation impeccable. Terezi searches herself for some kind of satisfaction, expecting it, remembering it. It isn’t there.

After a moment, she steps back from the mirror, kicks her old clothes further into the corner, and raps on the door.

“I need my cane,” she says.

The clown who gave her the uniform cracks it open an inch. “You can walk without it,” she says.

“I didn’t say I needed it to walk.”

“You can do your job without your fancy swordstick.”

“And you can do yours without face paint,” Terezi replies evenly, “but I don’t smell you walking around barefaced.”

The troll is evidently unimpressed.

“I won’t use it as a weapon,” she adds, begrudgingly. “But I need it to work.”

“Tough tits.”

“Intimidation is part of my job. Those of us who aren’t preternaturally tall have to rely on sharp objects to frighten people. Something I’d have thought _you_ understood.”

“Doesn’t sound like my problem.”

“You have half a dozen guards on me! Is your confidence in your own sect so low that one legislacerator with a sword is deemed threatening?”

The clown glowers.

“I’ll see if they haven’t thrown it out yet,” she says. “But if they haven’t, you’ll just have to make do.”

“That’s all I can ask,” Terezi says, and smiles. Her teeth gleam.

 

* * *

 

The tip of Terezi’s cane trails on the floor beside her as she strolls up to the courtblock doors. A trio of subjugglators walk in her wake, steps synchronized like an entourage, and if she holds her breath she can imagine they are her Neophyte investigation team, come to offer evidence and advice, instead of an armed guard to ensure her cooperation. The illusion is short-lived, but it helps.

The prosecution waits for her outside the doors. As suspected, it’s another subjugglator — this one’s wearing sheer black, with a purple vest, a mimicry of the legislacerator’s uniform. Terezi supposes it’s meant to be funny. She finds it perverse.

“Where’s your cane?” She twirls her own through her fingers. “You’re hardly a prosecutorial team without a cane.”

“Some of us still have two working ganderbulbs, thanks.”

“I know. Thank God _I_ don’t! Otherwise, I’d have to _see_ you, as well as smell you, and I’ve got a weak handle on my depression as it is.”

One of the guards cuffs Terezi over the ear for impertinence. It was worth it.

She squares her shoulders and straightens her uniform where the blow twisted it askew. A pair of subjugglator guards step forward and open the doors for her.

The courtblock’s walls swoop up to a high-roofed apex, black stone marbled with gold, and supported by glossy grey columns. The judge’s bench sits at the far end, oak wood painted with a plethora of colors, behind which sits a behemoth of a troll — not notable, in comparison with His Honorable Tyranny, but twice the size of any person that Terezi’s ever smelled. The jury rest to the judge’s left, nine hooded subjugglators, likely priests, from the beading on their robes. She is careful not to sniff too heavily in their direction. The room near them sways and constricts ominously, rife with chucklevoodoos. She gives it a wide berth.

Vriska stands behind the defendant’s table. Her clothes haven’t changed. They’re even more dilapidated, if possible, than they were when Terezi saw her last, deliberately torn in unflattering places to give her the appearance of a scraggly criminal. It’s a tactic. Terezi respects it.

A vast crowd of subjugglators sit behind the prosecutor’s empty table. Some applaud the prosecutor as she enters the room. Others direct their attention all to Terezi and Vriska, making their disapproval known with fervent jeers. They reek of sopor and Faygo. Terezi’s willing to bet her sword arm that none of them are sober.

One lone troll sits on Vriska’s side of the courtblock, draped casually in a seat three pews behind the table. Her robes sprawl over the bench beside her, and a pair of attendants crouch in the shadows at the back of the block, thick grey headsets clamped over their temples.

Magistragedy Kishar turns her head and offers Terezi a two-fingered salute.

“Your Cruelty.” Terezi pauses in front of her pew, ignoring the disturbance in proceedings it causes.

Kishar nods, silent. Her eyes drift to Terezi, distant, unconcerned, and then back to the judge. Her legs are crossed casually, her arms thrown over the back of her chair, as if she’s watching a courtblock drama instead of a real trial. Terezi’s not sure if it’s an act. She’s not sure if she wants to know.

“ _Hey,”_ the prosecutor insists. “Hurry it up, cherry-eyes.”

It’s insufferably weak, as insults go, but it garners a chuckle from the clowns behind her nonetheless. Terezi bites her tongue and approaches the defendant’s table.

Vriska lifts an eyebrow at the sight of her cane.

“They let you have your sword,” she remarks.

“I’ve never been in a courtblock without it, and I’m not starting tonight.”

She smirks. “You look ridiculous.”

“I look professional, thank you very much. I’ve seen barkbeasts dressed better than _you_.”

“I’m a fucking prisoner, thanks. Didn’t get a chance to whip out the latest couture while I was rotting in a drafty cellblock.”

Terezi’s humor snuffs out like a candle under hot breath. “When we get out of this,” she says, “I’m buying you a new coat.”

Vriska’s mouth flattens. “Yeah,” she says. “I — all right, fine. You get me out of this, I’ll let you dress me however the hell you want.”

“Is that a promise, Captain?”

The prosecutor coughs. Terezi sighs, straightens her face, turns around.

“Let’s start,” she suggests, and takes a seat beside Vriska.

The judge rises from behind his bench and spreads his arms to gather attention. “All rise,” he says, “ALL RISE TO THE HONORABLE JUROREAPERS AND YOUR MOST RIGHTEOUS JUDGE, yours truly.” 

All rise. All clap. Vriska doesn’t, until Terezi lands a kick on her shin and jolts her to her feet.

“ALL APPLAUD THE PROSECUTION. One Miruoy Codava. Your compliance is MOST MOTHERFUCKING APPRECIATED.”

The prosecutor bows deeply, grinning.

“ALL APPLAUD THE DEFENSE. One Terezi Pyrope.”

Weak applause, if any. Terezi winces. It’s to be expected.

“And the SUBJECT,” he crows. “ONE VRISKA SERKET.”

“Captain,” Vriska mutters. Terezi kicks her again.

“Let the prosecution do their business,” he says, and reclines in his chair.

The prosecution stands up, flicks her hair over one shoulder with self-righteous glee, and does her business.

The argument is basic. Terezi, taking notes as fast as the prosecution can provide material to take notes on, is almost surprised by the single-tiered criticisms, the stunningly basic explanations of legal concepts. It’s clearly written by someone who picked up a functioning knowledge of the law over a few days on Trollipedia.

It’s almost inspiring.

The argument is also uncreative: a simple recitation of Vriska’s crimes, a few descriptions of the standard punishments for such crimes. A touch of floral eloquence, sometimes, but far and in between. It’s not technically inaccurate, but it’s stone dry. 

What’s worse, it’s _boring._

Juroreapers hate _boring._

Terezi restrains herself from grinning at the conclusion of the argument, but it’s a near thing. A sniff in Vriska’s direction reveals that her defendant feels nowhere near her level of confidence. Vriska’s grip on the table has turned the knuckles of her flesh-hand white and has dented the table where her metal fingers press into it. Carefully, Terezi eases the prosthetic from the wood, and rises.

“Permission to speak,” she requests.

“Let the defense do their business,” the judge acquiesces.

She rises and plants herself in the middle of the room, with an equal view of Vriska and the juroreapers.

“Gentletrolls of the jury!” She cracks her cane on the floor. “I tell you no lies. I make no attempt to alleviate the defendant of her crimes, or demean their severity. There will be no legal trickery, no technical slight-of-hand. My argument here is simple, and threefold.”

Vriska coughs. Terezi studiously ignores her. 

“First,” she says. “This trial is illegal.”

This, as expected, garners a result. The crowd hisses are her. They don’t want to hear themselves criticized. Beginning with this point was a gamble on her behalf; but it’s the most technical of the three, the one they’ll be expecting to hear. They want to find her petty and insubstantial, so she gives them what she wants; they do not realize they are being satisfied, in their irritation, but they are, even while she manipulates them to her intention.

“The Most Mirthful and Delightful Division of Powers Act of 8023,” she announces. “Ever read it?”

Silence. Of course there’s silence. The floor is hers. This is, again, and most obviously, for effect.

“You should! Your ancestors wrote it. Or, well. Your predecessors. Who knows where _your_ ancestors came from? Anyway.” This garners a titter. A halfhearted guffaw or two. They like laughing at each others’ expense. “It lays down — more or less, I’m paraphrasing — that’s a lie, I never paraphrase — a variety of requirements. Necessities! Demands, for this kind of thing. Juggalo trials.” She waves a hand around the room. “Let me tell you, it was a hell of a time finding a precedent for _this.”_

Outright laughter. They’re warming to it. To her.

She lets the statute in question fall off her tongue, easy with repetition and study.

“Criminals tried by a jury of subjugglators,” she says, “may appeal for a halt of proceedings and retrial by a jury of legislacerators in any one of the following circumstances: a) in the event that the defendant knows one of their juroreapers to be unfaithful, unfunny, sober, or otherwise not in accordance with the Thirteen Commandments of the Fresh Book of Righteous Ninja Scripture; b) in the event that the trial did not take place in or on an officially sanctioned courtblock; c) in the event that the crime in question was an offense committed against an official or representative of the Cruelest Bar.”

Nobody is laughing now. Fair enough; it’s not a very funny thing, the law, despite its authors. She attempts to liven the mood.

“Far be it for me or the defendant to question the expertise of the most definitely drunken jury,” she lies, to their immediate gratification. “The first principle is most certainly not where we make our objection! However, on the second and third counts — good gentletrolls, we do have a problem.”

“Problem,” one of the juggalos near the entrance shouts. “I’ll show you a MOTHERFUCKING PROBLEM —”

“Remove him,” Terezi says carelessly, and a guard clubs brutally him over the head. The objector is dragged motionless from the room. A host of celebratory _whoop, whoops_ rise from the crowd; in entertainment, one can never go awry with a little violence. And to the point, a legislacerator’s exclusive right to speak during her argument is inviolate.

“Count the first,” she continues, ignoring the incident. “This, my intoxicated friends, is not an officially sanctioned courtblock. For all its charms, I am the first legislacerator to set foot upon it since — well, since _never_.” She taps the floor with the tip of her cane. “Ergo, it cannot have been certified by an official of the Bar. And here we are. Having trial.” She spreads her hands, as if to say, _well, what can you do._ “And my defendant _has_ made appeal for retrial. Have you granted it to her? No. Which, I’m afraid to say, is a Class-C misdemeanor under the Alternian Penal Code, and makes all of you eligible for trial yourselves!” She smiles, attempting to appear understanding. “Not that I would dream of filing charges. No. I am a _merciful_ troll.”

This gets an outright laugh. Merciful troll — hyperbole that it is — never fails to steal a chuckle. She’s used the line more than once. She’s never heard it fall flat.

“So, merciful as I am, the only charge I’ll press is the right of retrial. Which is to say: your verdict here cannot be and is not legitimate, regardless of what you decide. Set aside, even, the fact that her murder of legislacerators _demands_ trial by legislacerator, and that, to my knowledge, none of you have passed the bar exam!” She points to the floor. “This, dear fellows, is abjectly illegal, and acquiescence to its occurrence has made accomplices of all of you.”

Uncomfortable rustling. The Church and Bar, so infrequently at odds, dislike being set against each other.

She grins. “Technicality,” she says apologetically. “Had to get it out of the way.” Spinning, she plants her hand on Vriska’s table and leans on it casually. “My second argument, if it makes you feel better, doesn’t involve any of you at all.”

She doesn’t have to sniff for Vriska’s expression. Anxiety and a hint of something that _isn’t_ anxiety emanates from her side of the table. Something like wonder, maybe. Terezi doesn’t dwell on it. 

“To the point,” she says, “my second argument involves someone who, _most_ unfortunately, couldn’t be with us today. His name is Gamzee Makara.” She turns and hits the jury with her sauciest wink. “We dated.”

That gets them. Interest sets them aflutter, hanging on her words. She can practically feel them in her hands, minds soft and malleable as clay.

“What the prosecution fails to mention in their _—_ admittedly eloquent — speech is that Vriska Serket has already been prosecuted! Thoroughly! And with vindictive force! The Church, not two perigees ago, sent one of its premier laughsassins to my very doorstep, with the intention of kidnapping and murder.” 

The prosecution pointedly rolls her eyes. Terezi pointedly plants herself between the prosecution and the judge.

“Makara _admitted,”_ she insists, “to an intent to kill not only the defendant, but yours truly, as well. He freely confessed to desiring both of us dead, and had intent to slaughter us without any kind of notice. Now, I understand, of course, that the Church does things a little differently than the Bar. None understand it better! However. If you will recall, before commandeering prisoners, the Church _must_ issue a notice of arrest at least two hours prior to the acquisition.” Terezi inclines her head knowingly. “Either such a notice was never issued, Honorable Juroreapers, or I need a new communications officer. Except I suppose Makara took care of that, too, didn’t he?” She turns to Vriska, briefly, and nods without bothering to wait for the defendant’s confirmation. “He did. He killed my crew.” She takes a step toward the judge’s bench. “I, too, am aware of the Church’s divine right to slaughter. There is no troll unworthy of your cull! I have read the sacred texts. I am, if nothing else, a well-read heretic.”

The judge smiles.

“But! Makara failed to follow procedure. He failed to obey even the directives of his own commanders. Ultimately, Most Mirthful Assembly, in risking my ship and crew without warning nor warrant, he failed _you.”_ She shrugs. “And in so doing, forfeited the Church’s right to execution. The prisoner falls solely into the arms of the Cruelest Bar, a claim which you have abused and denied.” 

“Objection,” says the prosecution, springing to her feet.

“Not _now_ ,” Terezi snaps, at the same time as the judge says, “LET IT BE SPOKEN.”

The prosecutor turns to Vriska. “Why is it that Brother Makara cannot come to the stand to defend himself?”

Vriska glances around, lifts an eyebrow, points to her own chest inquiringly.

“Yes, _you,_ maggot.”

“He’s dead,” she says carelessly. 

“How?”

Vriska snorts. “Well, see, when you separate a troll’s head from the rest of their body, something very special happens, and —”

“By _whose hand,_ you putrid atheist?”

She hesitates, eyes flickering to Terezi. Terezi flattens her mouth and tries to look neutral.

“Mine,” she lies.

“Are you sure?”

“It was a joint effort,” Terezi says curtly. “Terrible tragedy, you have our condolences. Can we proceed with the trial, now, or would you like to weep about it?”

The prosecution curls her lip but sits back down, apparently satisfied.

Terezi risks a sniff in the Magistragedy’s direction. Kishar is apathetic.

“But all of this would be forgivable,” Terezi announces, “if not for point three.”

She begins a complex routine with her cane, spinning it behind her back and over one shoulder with fluid grace. Her blood thrums with something hot and gloriously alive. 

“I charge the Grand Highblood with second-degree corruption and conspiracy to coerce,” she announces, and the block goes wild.

Vriska scrambles up on the table to avoid the array of objects that are hurled at the defense table, proffering rude gestures in the clowns’ general direction. The juroreapers are yelling, perhaps attempting to have Terezi silenced, perhaps attempting to have her killed. The prosecutor appears frozen to her table.

“Please,” she says, lifting her voice, “please — my _argument!”_

“QUIET YOUR MOTHERFUCKING SELVES,” the judge roars, “OR I WILL DO IT MOTHERFUCKING FOR YOU, YOU SHITPANNED GRUBNUGGETS.”

Silence swallows the room.

His gaze settles on Terezi.

“Thank you,” she says, throat dry. “As I was saying.”

She doesn’t try to smell the Magistragedy’s reaction to the declaration.

“The trial was arranged under threat of harm or death to Her Most Excellent Cruelty, Magistragedy Kishar, with the implication that the Cruelest Bar of the Alternian Empire and its operatives, representatives, et cetera, would be placed under threat by the Most Righteous and Divine Church of Mirth, and operatives, representatives, et cetera, should she fail to turn over Captain Vriska Serket.” Terezi wheels her cane around to point at the Magistragedy _._ “Do you deny it?”

She holds her breath.

Kishar lifts her chin, glances from the jury to Terezi’s outstretched cane. A wry smile stretches across her face.

“No,” she says indifferently.

Terezi extends a hand. “Under the Hardie Act of 8929,” she argues, “actions or decisions made under duress or threat — hereafter ‘coercion’ — are invalid and cannot be considered legal rule.”

“Objection.”

“Yes,” she says pleasantly, turning to the prosecutor.

“Do you have precedents?”

Terezi beams.

“I’m very glad you asked,” she says. “I have eight.”

“Objection.”

“ _Furone vs. Tankha,”_ she says. “ _Hersel vs. Schele. Phasha vs. Kobbal.”_

“Objection,” pleads the prosecutor. Terezi advances on the judge’s bench.

“ _Conici vs. Yasada. Ufuuru vs. Myanra. Teicka vs. Asimii.”_

_“Objection!”_

“ _Gesetz vs. Calkos,”_ Terezi says, lifting her voice over the prosecutor’s. “ _Ampora vs. Peixes_.”

That quiets them all.

“There are details to that case,” she adds. “They are prohibited from discussion under Imperial statute, but courtblock citations are exempt. I don’t imagine many of you know it. Would you like a review?”

The judge skirts his eyes up and down her person, and shakes his head, slow, impassive.

“Well, then. I trust that my examples are sufficient.” She taps her cane on Vriska’s table. “The precedent is more than clear. Willful coercion of one government official is illegal, regardless of the rank of the officer doing the coercion.” She hesitates before deciding to add, “Exempli gratia: an Orphaner’s attempt to coerce the Empress is illegal, regardless of the Orphaner’s rank.”

She spreads her arms. “Your leader broke the law,” she says. “The Church has no right — _you_ have no right — to kill Serket. You forfeit the right to slaughter by disregarding those standards which established it.”

She waits. Few draw breath.

“Thank you,” she says. “I leave you to your considerations.”

She sits down.

There is no applause. Vriska doesn’t move at all, but instead watches her, eyes wide and hungry, expression inscrutable. The juggalos _hate_ her, she’s sure — at least, the ones that aren’t the juroreapers — but she’s fairly certain that the juroreapers are angry enough that they’ll forget about Vriska, for the time being. They don’t know she’s Mindfang’s descendant; if the Highblood hasn’t shared that information with them, there’s half a chance.

But then, maybe she’s just riled them up. She’s not used to working with _clowns —_

They’re only trolls, though, flesh and blood like any legislacerator jury, and she trusts herself; or at the very least, she trusts her arguments. 

A clap splits the silence.

The Magistragedy, still sprawled back on her chair, is applauding. Slowly. Casually. Her eyes do not make contact with any part of Terezi’s person; instead, they hold the even gaze of the judge himself. 

After fifteen seconds, she drops her hands, and folds them in her lap.

Terezi takes a deep breath and turns back to the judge’s bench.

They confer in heated, quiet arguments, the juroreapers. She strains to hear what they’re saying, fails, strains again. The room is enveloped in murmuration. One of the Magistragedy’s attendants shifts uncomfortably, and then, realizing her mistake, freezes stone still and gnaws at her fingernails.

“What do you think?” She nudges Vriska’s hand.

“I think you’re fucking terrifying.”

“I told you, didn’t I?”

“No,” Vriska says. Upon closer inspection, there’s nothing humorous about Vriska’s declaration. She is afraid. “You’re fucking terrifying.”

“I’m sorry if I —”

“I’m not afraid for _me,”_ Vriska says, and hovers on the verge of continuing, but is interrupted.

A raucous cackle erupts from the jury. They whisper amongst themselves, laughter swelling as each nods in turn, and then one ambles over to the judge, tittering all the way. They murmur in the judge’s ear, pausing to snicker to themselves; when the judge hears, he smiles, toothy, and chuckles to himself.

Terezi’s fingers tap on her cane. One, two, three. One, two, three. She hardly breathes.

Vriska reaches out and touches her elbow. “Listen,” she says, inexplicably urgent. “If —”

“ALL JOINTLY ASSEMBLED,” the judge shrieks, “MAY LISTEN TO THIS HERE JURY-APPROVED MOTHERFUCKING VERDICT IF THEY ARE SO MOTHERFUCKING INCLINED.”

Vriska makes a noise of aggravation and lets her hand fall away. Terezi, briefly noting it, watches the judge.

“We here find the defendant — one VRISKA SERKET — most,” he says, lips curling with grotesque humor, “motherfucking — INNOCENT.”

Terezi stops _breathing_.

Vriska chokes on her own lungs, but Terezi hardly cares; she can’t imagine what the Magistragedy’s face looks like, can’t imagine what her _own_ face looks like — she can’t even bring herself to feel joy, only the numb, distant sensation of flight. 

“We find the defender — one TEREZI PYROPE — most motherfucking GUILTY.”

Terezi’s cane slips through her fingers and clatters to the ground.

“What.”

The Magistragedy has risen to her feet, painted lips wide in outrage.

“Guilty,” the judge continues, “of HERESIES MOST FOUL, ACCUSATIONS AGAINST THE CHURCH, and the MURDER OF ONE BROTHER GAMZEE MAKARA.” He leans forward and laces her fingers. “Do these things you deny, littlest of sisters?”

A sharp cold flowers in Terezi’s chest. She shakes her head.

“Very good. VERY TIDY. Your sentence, then,” he drawls. “IS EXECUTION.”

“A death sentence,” she says, nodding. It’s the standard, for those crimes. The Church is rarely lenient. Perhaps she will get to choose the noose.

“NO.”

She flinches.

“If I had sentenced you to death, lawbug, I would have SENTENCED YOU TO MOTHERFUCKING DEATH. Your sentence is _execution.”_ He dangles a yellow-tipped claw in Vriska’s direction. “To be carried out on the personage of _another_ blue-blooded heresy-spitting TRAITOR TO THE EMPIRE.” He nudges down his glasses. “THAT’S THE SERKET, IF YOU WEREN’T KNOWING.”

Vriska’s breath catches on her throat like wet paper on nails.

“You said she was innocent,” Terezi says.

“YOUR AURICULARS DID NOT YOU MISLEAD,” he agrees.

“She is free. This is — my sentence is none of her concern.”

“Do you dispute the ruling of the most revered jury, you parasitic faithless?”

“I — no.”

“Good. You’ve got HALF A PAN ON YOU, then, at least.” He gestures to Vriska and shuffles his papers. “BE GETTING IT ON, BITCHSISTER. We don’t have all motherfucking night.”

“She should be _free!”_ Terezi scoops up her cane and uses it to gesture at Vriska. “I _won!”_

“Yes,” he says, with peculiar mildness. “S’ the point. Wouldn’t be a sentence, SISTER, if you weren’t getting your suffer on from it. Did the Academy put _anything_ in your goddamn pan?”

The Magistragedy bristles. Terezi knows she’s quickly losing favor, bickering with the judge. It’s Neophytic. Amateurish. Unprofessional. She doesn’t give a single damn.

“Let me suffer,” she insists. “I’ll suffer! But this is —” It’s _not_ illegal, though, it’s _not,_ and though she wracks her pan trying to reason through the argument, it’s like trying to find the end of a knotted loop. She understands, with terrible clarity, why they were laughing. It’d be so fucking funny, if she weren’t on the receiving end.

“JUSTICE,” says the judge, with triumphant finality. “Draw your swordstick, LITTLE LAWTROLL.”

Vriska tips back her head and _laughs_ , loud and ragged and hollow, a sound full of outrage, and Terezi cannot move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The executioner’s within me_  
>  _And he comes, blindfold ready_  
>  _Sword in hand_  
>  _And arms so steady_  
>  —Troll Florence and the Machine, _Make Up Your Mind_


	9. The Most Righteous and Divine Church of Mirth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“Traitors hang. A foundational rule of justice, with implications manifold; a priori, it functioned to communicate the dangers of treachery to the common soldier, a warning against tattling on the offenses of some upper officer. Order was thereby achieved — for there could be no reliable command if each level of the pecking order constantly attempted to destabilize each other with accusations of treason. But such a maxim served, too, to bind the very Empire itself: for among the first commandments of Alternian law was that treason, betrayal, or otherwise anti-Imperial sentiment was punished most bitterly, whereas those willing to oust traitors, by whatever methods necessary, were rewarded most handsomely. To betray the traitor, it seems, was the singular exception to the general rule. Ergo, if there ever were any successful traitors to Empire, they were so only because they knew well enough to keep their damn head down.”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

There’s an ember in her bloodpusher and it’s boiling her blood. Ash spreads through her lungs, suffocating her, igniting the tissues of her body; fire erupts in her throat, swallowing her words, smoke drifting into her pan and asphyxiating clear thought. The ember in her bloodpusher, it burns her from the inside.

“Terezi,” Vriska says.

Terezi turns.

Vriska doesn’t say anything more. She just smiles, tilts her head, gaunt shoulders lifting with hopeless resignation, as if to suggest, with the goading smugness that only she could manage in the wake of her death sentence: _I told you so._

The fire reaches her mind, and Terezi thinks no more.

She draws her sword and approaches the defendant’s table. The Magistragedy glares furiously, but she says nothing. This is, after all, not so different from how it might have gone before a proper jury. It is customary for a legislacerator to perform her defendant’s sentence. It is the legislacerator’s inviolate right to claim the cull.

Vriska’s oculars widen, but she nods, swallowing, with her eyes on the point of the sword and her throat bared open. Ripe for a clean, swift cut. “Please,” she says — for once, she is gentle. “Quickly.”

Terezi sets the tip of her blade between Vriska’s collarbones. One of the subjugglators lets out an elegiac whoop. Somewhere, someone is singing. Vriska closes her eyes. Exhales a shuddering breath.

“Quickly,” she repeats, quiet.

Her hand is steady. She remembers —

She remembers Vriska laughing —

_So you’re Pyrope?_

She remembers — there is nothing but Vriska’s laughter, ringing in her auriculars, rhapsodizing with the sound of fire licking at her panmatter.

The song stops.

_Quickly._

Terezi’s arm tenses and —

The sword swings down, slicing the prongcuffs in half.

“Run,” Terezi tells Vriska, seizing her hand, and sprints for the doors.

The roar is deafening. Subjugglators spring from their seats atop the bench, flinging themselves to the courtblock floor, landing inelegantly and piling atop one another like a horde of rabid howlbeasts. Anguished pandemonium swells to thunderous levels. The block is quickly suffused with the pitchy warble of panicked trolls. Someone calls for order; they are trampled under the juggalo stampede. Blood, hot and metallic, has been spilled. Chaos engulfs the courtblock with such speed that one might wonder if it had not been there all along.

Terezi darts along the defense’s side of the courtblock. The Magistragedy’s attendants, frozen without orders, let her slip past. A handful of subjugglators make it to the doors before Terezi does, but the element of surprise makes them slow — her sword cuts clean through one, two throats, tossing their bodies askew to blockade their comrade’s efforts at capture. Their deaths open a gap in the guard; she flings herself through the doors and slams them both behind her. 

Clowns fling themselves at the barrier, bodies hitting the wood with muffled manifold _thumps._ Terezi hauls Vriska down the empty hallway, picking a direction at random.

“Terezi,” Vriska says. “ _Terezi_ —” 

“Unless your next words are ‘I’ve got a plan,’ it can wait.” 

A band of five juggalos appear in the hallway behind them, bare feet slapping against the durasteel, their whoops and shouts echoing off the ship’s walls like a pack of barkbeasts’ hunting cries. 

“The cellblocks,” Vriska says urgently. “They’re keeping the crew —”

“Noted.”

One of the subjugglators flings their club, denting the wall beside them. It’s at least five feet off the mark.

“Dumbass,” Vriska mutters. Terezi swallows her laugh, because if she lets herself laugh she’s fairly certain she’ll start hyperventilating. 

“Yes,” Terezi agrees instead, and whacks the doorway’s operational panel behind them, clamping the doors shut on their pursuers. She twists her sword through the control matrix, scattering sparks of electricity over the metal doors, and freezing the lock. 

Momentary quiet engulfs them. Terezi takes all of four seconds to breathe and clear her head before breaking into a sprint. 

They bank left and winding back through the ship’s prison wing. Here, the hallways grow narrower, higher, with dim lighting, made all the more eerie by the lack of noise, the sodden silence scraping at Terezi’s auriculars. She doesn’t shiver. It’s a near thing.

She still has Vriska by the hand. She considers letting go, decides against it. 

“Here,” Vriska says, tugging her into a narrow hallway. “They were — they kept us all together, they’re over —”

Terezi leans in to sniff the labels on the cellblocks. There are no prisoner names, only numbers, and an indication of whether the cellblock is vacant; from what she can smell, there are only fifteen occupied cellblocks, which is less than the crew they came in with.

“Some are missing.”

“We had four psionics onboard,” Vriska says absently, “they’ll be kept in a separate containment unit.” She pauses, throws a glance over her shoulder, anxious. “Do you want to — if you want to go find them, I mean, I’m sorry, but they’re as good as —”

“Save who we can.” 

“Right.” Vriska swivels her eyes around, peering at each door. The pupils of her vision eightfold dilate and focus at irregular intervals, moving with dizzying haste. “That one,” she says, pointing at one door; “that one’s Aradia.”

Terezi stabs her sword into the locking mechanism for the indicated door. It shrieks, chokes out a puff of smoke, and the lock clangs out of place. She whirls and delivers a kick to the center of the door, knocking it open.

She barely gets a glimpse of the troll inside before a wall of white engulfs her. Hollow screams fill the corridor, echoing as if issued through a thin slate of glass, and translucent shapes swarm her head. Terezi stumbles back, lifting her sword, but there’s nothing she can _do_ ; the phantoms swarm and concentrate, sapping the air around her, howling nonsense syllables directly against the rim of her auriculars. She chokes on her own breath, turning icy in her lungs.

And then, just as quickly as they came, the ghosts dissipate. Aradia stumbles out of the cell, hands up, eyes wide. “Terezi,” she says. “Sorry, I — _Terezi?”_

“And company,” Vriska calls, from further down the hall. “And, uh, by the way, what the fuck?”

“I thought they had come to kill me — I had to take necessary precautions — how are you _here?”_

Vriska hesitates and looks at Terezi.

“Differing interpretations of the law,” Terezi says, and tugs Aradia from the cell. “Not important, at present. We’re going.”

“Going?”

“Do you have your wristtop?”

Aradia pats herself down, winces. “No.”

“Fine. That’s fine. Help us get as many as we can, they’ll be coming soon.” 

She hands Aradia the cane-sheath used for her sword and moves on to the next door, giving it the same treatment as Aradia’s. Out staggers a beleagured brownblood, cravat askew, spluttering thanks faster than her tongue can reliably manage them. Terezi ignores her and opens the next cell.

Over the course of three minutes, they open fifteen doors. None of the crew appear well. They’re obviously malnourished, clothes ragged, bones jutting from their frames, hardly a pound of flesh amongst them. No weapons to speak of. True to Vriska’s hypothesis, none of the yellowbloods are there, except a scrawny engineer whose blood sits close enough to green on the spectrum that it could be mistaken for olive in bad light.

Footsteps echo in the hall outside the prison row, accompanied by fervent shouts. Terezi seizes Aradia and hauls her in the opposite direction, the crew trailing in their wake like infant quackbeasts.

“Ship,” she says. “We need a ship. Ideas?”

“I don’t know — they never took us outside the cellblocks, there’s no way of knowing —”

“Not a hangar? A place this big, there’s got to be landing ships. This would wreck if it tried to get planetside.”

“Perhaps, but we could be on the other side of the ship; one wrong turn could put us in the middle of Mass —” 

Vriska groans. “For fuck’s _sake.”_

“ _What?_ ” Aradia’s fingernails bite her palms with enough force to draw blood. Terezi winces.

“It’s a _Church ship_. You think nobody ever died here?” She waggles her fingers enigmatically. “Ask around.”

Terezi feels a brief, brilliant, lightning-hot bolt of affection for Vriska. 

Understanding flickers acros Aradia’s face. She takes a deep breath, braces herself on the wall, and her eyes turn white. Her mouth moves inaudibly, lips churning out nonsense syllables, breath coming short and cold. The air around her plummets in temperature. The nearest crew members edge away.

Footsteps, closer, heavier. The smell of rotting grapes washes down the corridor and Terezi tightens her grip on her sword.

“Megido,” Vriska warns. “We’re not rich on time —”

Her lips move faster; her blank eyes flit in midair, seemingly without focus, desperate with haste.

Terezi pushes to the front of the group, planting herself between the juggalos and the crew. She’s the only one with a weapon. If it comes to it, they’ll mow down the crew like wheat before a scythe.

“South,” Aradia gasps. Her eyes flower with color. “South Wing, there’s a hangar deck, they keep the landing vessels stored there. Left and down the stairs, ninth door on the right, _go.”_

Vriska is pelting in the direction Aradia indicates before the words are fully through her lips. She hooks Terezi around by the elbow and hauls her along, long legs making quick work of the short hallway. The group follows, shattering the relative quiet with fifteen-odd trolls’ boots cascading on the floor.

A locked door sits at the end of the hallway. Grape-stench blossoms behind them. Someone screams, setting off the rest of the group, and they put on a burst of speed. Deep cackling swallows the panicked sounds. Terezi doesn’t turn around. She can’t.

“Locked,” Vriska chants, “locked, locked, locked, Terezi, it’s locked —”

Terezi crooks back her arm and flings her sword. It buries itself in the doors’ control panel with a quiet _snick_ , cracking the plastic evenly down the middle. The doors shudder and wrench apart, freezing with an inch between them; Vriska shoves her metal shoulder in the gap and uses the leverage to twist, _hard_ , forcing the slates apart and eliciting a screech from the steel. Crew members duck under her arm and race down the stairs behind it, feet clumsy and light with emergency.

Terezi’s sword is buried in the panel. She tugs at it twice, to no avail. The cackling gets louder. Closer.

Vriska hisses under her breath. She grabs the hilt in her metal hand and yanks, sliding the steel from the plastic as easily as a fork from butter.

“ _Go,”_ she insists, shoving the sword into Terezi’s hands and pushing her through the doors. Terezi allows herself to be manhandled, taking the stairs two at a time, weapon gripped tightly.

Aradia shouts at the crew, pleading for more speed, more agility, more concentration. She leads fifty yards ahead of Vriska and Terezi, weaving nimbly through the ship’s labyrinthine bowels, all while the pervading stench of greasepaint wafts down from above. Terezi leaps onto the stairs’ railing and slides the remaining two flights, leaps from the bannister at the bottom and hits the ground running. Vriska is never more than two steps behind.

“Counselor,” she barks. “Hold on.” 

“Are you out of your pan? Did you forget why we’re _running?”_

“No,” she says, “no, just — c’mon.” She grabs Terezi’s sleeve and pulls her through the doorway at the bottom of the stairs, thumbing the latch to close them. There is movement at the top of the stairs. Aradia pauses at the end of the corridor, sending them an aggravated look.

“Talk fast,” Terezi says flatly.

“Weapons,” Vriska says. “We need weapons.”

“Oh, lovely, did you happen to pass a shop?”

“No, asshole, I mean that _they’ve_ got some. The clowns.”

Something bangs on the door. Vriska flinches, and pretends she didn’t.

“I’m not sure if you know how this works, frankly! In order to take their weapons, we have to _win_ the fight, Vriska.”

“No shit. Just trust me for a fucking second.”

Terezi exhales heavily.

“Turnabout’s fair play,” Vriska reminds her. “C’mon.” 

“We’re wasting a lead.”

“You took out nine highbloods in a dive bar. Tell me you can’t take five juggalos.”

“I can’t.”

“Quitter talk. Try again.” Vriska raps the door. “Also, at this point, we’re not going to win a footrace, so we probably don’t have another option!” Her smile makes clear her delight in the risk. 

Terezi presses herself against the wall and lifts her eyes to the heavens, which she hopes, given their lack of use, is a sufficiently clear demonstration of her exasperation. 

“Okay. Just — get ready, right? Get ready. Okay.” Vriska presses the switch again, and the doors slip back into the wall.

The first subjugglator trips through, the unexpected ease of his passage turning his feet clumsy. Terezi leaps and skewers him through the neck, fast and clean. The second and third try to shove themselves through the door both at once, the thrill of the chase making them sloppy, and she doesn’t bother removing her blade properly; she tears it out through one side, opening a geyser of purple blood. In the second for which they’re both blinded, she swings the weapon around and severs both heads with one stroke.

Everything reeks. Iron, shit, bad wine. The rest of the subjugglators’ cohort, a few steps behind their dead companions, greet her with animalistic yells. She lifts her sword and falls into a duelist’s stance.

Except it’s needless, because as the foremost juggalo leaps through the doorway, Vriska slams the doors shut again, closing the thick metal sheets over his cranium. He drops. Terezi doesn’t imagine he’ll be getting back up.

“Fast,” Vriska orders, and strips the clubs from the subjugglators. From their boots she removes dual longknives, a total of six, one of which she keeps for herself, another of which she hands to Aradia; the crew members get clubs, although one, upon being offered, refuses, and draws from her inside pocket a triad of throwing stars.

“Good troll,” Vriska says approvingly, handing the club to someone else. “Great troll. Give that troll a fucking raise. Aradia, anyone who doesn’t have shit to kill with, tell them to scab the corpse and make do. Actually, you all just do that, you’ve got working auriculars, you don’t need her to middle-man this shit. If you’re already armed and ready to kill a bitch: they’re going to figure out how doors work eventually, and we shouldn’t be here when that happens.”

Terezi shoos Aradia away. “To clarify: keep going. We’ll stay.”

Aradia doesn’t need seconding. She charges down the corridor, her small band of armed trolls in tow.

Vriska and Terezi hunch over the bodies as the few remaining crew members without weaponry rifle through the subjugglators’ pockets. Most, if not all, carry penknives, or some kind of sharp jewelry, which the more enterprising turn into small weaponry. 

“Turnabout,” Terezi says.

Vriska glances over. “Well. I had to say _something_ to get you to agree.”

“So you didn’t mean it?”

“Mean it, shmean it. I said what I said. Who gives a shit whether I meant it.”

“I do.”

Vriska’s foot bounces. She cuffs one of the engineers on the ear. “Don’t bother with their money, you sticky-pronged shit,” she snaps. “Unless your specibus is caegarkind, keep your hands on the sharp bits, not the shiny ones.” Upon noticing Terezi’s unabated attention, she shifts uncomfortably. “And, uh, I dunno. What are you asking?”

“Did you trust me? Going into the trial.”

She shrugs. “Trusted you to try, I guess.”

“Did you trust me to win?”

“Fuck. That wasn’t a matter of trusting _you,_ Pyrope. That was a matter of trusting the jury. Which I didn’t, and, y’know, I was right. Obviously.”

“Did you trust me to save you?”

Vriska’s eyes close, tightly, briefly.

“Can’t remember,” she says, light tone starkly at odds with the rigidity of her posture, and she beckons to the crew. “Let’s get a move on.”

Aradia is far enough ahead to be out of sight, but one of the doors in the hallway is open. There are about seven of them left, in total, and Vriska and Terezi lead. Vriska hefts her knife in her flesh hand, her right one, which puzzles Terezi. Vriska is left-handed. The position can’t be comfortable.

There’s little time to inquire about it. They round the corner and plunge through the doorway to the hangar, only to pull up short, stumbling over each other. 

The hangar for landing ships is a cavern large enough to hold _Pyrexia_ four times over. Columns of steel pin triangular braces to the ceiling, hugging dark grey walls of vertigo-inducing height. The floor shines with the dull luster of clean concrete, speckled with black, while the door to the bay encompasses an entire wall of the enclosure, built from four-foot thick glass. Settled along the opposite wall sits the control desk, dashboard packed with glittering switches, glowing screens. Five subjugglator landing ships occupy the space: odd, oblong spacecrafts, with crooked wings, built like a bat hunched over in preparation for flight. 

Aradia and the crew sit on their knees, hands behind their heads, twelve subjugglators standing over them. 

Upon seeing Vriska and Terezi, grins split their faces. “Motherfuck,” says one. “GLORIOUS NIGHT.”

A guard slips behind them and shuts the door, locking it from the inside. Kills the possibility of backwards escape. 

Terezi sniffs deeply. Strategies flit through her mind’s eye like someone breezing through catalogue. None are viable. She needs time. She doesn’t have any.

The clown who spoke — he’s got short-cropped hair and greasepaint like tear tracks, a smaller-looking club decorated with spikes — steps in between Aradia and the head engineer. “On your knees,” he says, “AND YOUR WEAPONS FAR BESIDE YOU.”

Terezi decides to call him One _._

Vriska is the first to drop her knife, slowly settling on her knees. Terezi gives her an incredulous look, but she ignores it and beckons sharply, waving Terezi down with her. To her reluctance, Terezi obeys.

The crew follow her example. One’s smile grows a distinct air of satisfaction.

“Thank you kindly.” He nudges the communications officer aside with his toe. “And your hands behind your head. IF YOU PLEASE.”

“You realize you all don’t have to actually speak in your quirk,” Terezi mumbles, but if he hears her, he does a spectacular job of pretending that he can’t. 

Vriska lifts her handsto her head with exaggerated lethargy. Whereas the others lace their fingers behind their cranium, she settles hers lightly over the sides. 

Her eyes slide to Terezi’s and widen. 

The catalogue freezes on one page. 

“It makes you sound like a drunken Sufferite,” Terezi adds, pitching her voice up to its higher echelons of scratchy unpleasantness.

Three subjugglators move to cull her on the spot. She names them Two, Three, and Four. One throws out an arm and stops them, although the temptation to bash her pan out clearly takes its toll on him.

“YOU DON’T SPEAK THAT NAME, traitor, don’t you know the _law?”_

“I’m already a criminal. What are you going to do? Cull me twice?”

“It is. MOTHERFUCKING SIN. To speak the law of HE WHO WEARS NO MOTHERFUCKING SIGN.”

“You can say _Signless,”_ Terezi huffs. “Stretching the word out into nine syllables doesn’t make it any less illegal, it just wastes your breath.”

“Do you have no pride? NO MOTHERFUCKING SHAME?”

“Not a whole lot of either, as of late,” Terezi says frankly, and that gets Five, Six, Seven, laughing. Paying attention.

Vriska isn’t laughing. She’s doing her best to keep her gaze on the floor, while to the far left of the pack, a scrawny beigeblood begins to crawl away from the group. 

“I mean, I’ve been living among juggalos,” Terezi says, with increasing volume, “so there’s a shortage of role models in those departments!”

It takes them a moment. They don’t take kindly to it, when it registers.

Eight wants to club her then and there, and he’s barely restrained by Nine’s warning hold on his collar. She’s got them bristling. Another touch — “And it’s tough to feel _any_ kind of self-esteem when you smell like the unfortunate consequence of a boiled turnip’s flushed encounter with some highblood’s piss,” — and they’re aggravated. Aggressive. Prone to violence, particularly where their aggravator is concerned, which is why it’s critical to keep their attention on her, not the crew, which are much more passive receptacles of abuse, and therefore much more attractive targets —

Terezi comes to the sudden and somewhat alarming realization that she’s enjoying herself.

The beigeblood sheds his shoes and creeps out of the subjugglators’ line of sight, slowly rising to his feet. 

“I think,” One begins, and Terezi cuts him off.

“ _Really?_ You know, I’ve always poo-pooed miracles, conceptually, but that right there is proof positive to the contrary! _Do_ go on.”

He lifts his club. She springs to her feet, sword in hand.

“Are we going to fight now? Oh, I’d love to fight now. I’ve been cooped up for weeks in this behemoth pile of leavings you call a spaceship, and I’ve heard beating the living shit out of a greasy clown is _just_ the thing for cabin fever.”

Eleven and Twelve aren’t tempted by her taunts, but they’re watching the interaction between her and One with anticipation. Good enough. They’re not focused on the beigeblood, who with each passing second inches closer to the control desk, or Vriska, whose forehead is laced with sweat.

“Come on,” Terezi adds. “You’re not _scared_. That would be very silly. After all, there are twelve of you, and only one of me. Although, given the identity of the _me_ in question, your odds do sound less favorable than it would initially appear.”

“YOUR TONGUE DOES YOU WRONG, little one. IT BUYS YOU PAIN.” 

Terezi ignores this spectacularly uninventive retort. “Also! Where are the chucklevoodoos? I’ve been expecting some quality spooks, I’ll have you know, and I’ve had _nothing._ Jack shit. What’s with that? Did you all run out of juice?”

He doesn’t say anything to this. Just pauses for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second.

She tilts her head. “Or,” she continues, intrigued, “no — you can’t, can you?”

“SHUT YOUR HELLISH WINDGAPER.”

“No, you _can’t!_ Because if you could, you would’ve by now. It’s rare. Isn’t it? Tell me if I’m getting colder, here, by the way, but I’m not, am I? They act like everyone in the Church has chucklevoodoo, but that can’t be true — it’s a gift, just like psychics. You can’t train someone to be magical. It’s fate and chance.” She giggles. “That’s good to know. Hey, I bet that’s why you’re on lousy hangar guard duty while the trial of the century’s going on upstairs. No majjyks, no dice, am I right?”

The beigeblood scuttles behind the control desk and the row of subjugglators advances on Terezi. For a moment she feels something resembling pity, maybe a distant cousin of sympathy, for the juggalos. They understand nothing. 

But on second thought, the feeling vanishes, and she slides back into comfortable self-interest.

“By the way! I do sincerely hope that you all are paying attention,” she says, gesturing broadly with her sword. “Because what I’m about to say will change your lives!

“They don’t give a shit!” She points a finger at the ceiling. “You realize that, yes? When we kill you — when _I_ kill you — they’ll grind their teeth, and yell about it, but they won’t give a shit about _you._ They’ll be pissed because we get away. They’ll toss your bodies out the airlock without shedding a single grape-flavored tear for your loss! And you’ll have died because you were too lead-panned to figure out that whatever they _tell_ you you’re dying for — it’s not worth it.”

Several bare their teeth. Aggravation tips the scale into fury. Insult paid to a troll can be overlooked. Insult paid to a troll’s cause cannot be.

“Believe me!” Terezi takes a step backward, despite herself, because they’re advancing with some speed, now, and most look to be on the verge of pouncing. “I’ve been there,” she says. “I’m still in uniform, aren’t I? I wear teal, and you wear — bones? tattoos? something, probably — but you and I, we’re not different species. Do you think your Messiahs will be impressed, if you die doing _this?_ It won’t be a noble death. I’m not going to give you that.”

Nine stops in her tracks. The scents of Four, Seven, and Twelve all sour. The others, although not indifferent to her speech, aren’t moved enough to falter. Two goes so far as to laugh at her. Maybe they can tell her bloodpusher’s not in it. It’s not the coldest reception she’s ever had, all told. 

The beigeblood reaches the control panel and seizes a very large, _very_ red lever.

“Oh, well,” she says. “You should all remember that I did make an effort.”

“Do you expect us to be MOTHERFUCKING MOVED, Sufferite?”

“First of all,” Terezi says, “I’m not a Sufferite. I just dress like one. Second of all —”

Vriska’s hand twitches over her temple.

“— I did tell you to pay attention.”

The beigeblood throws the lever, and the bay plunges into zero-gravity. 

The subjugglators are lifted, squirming, shouting, into the air, along with the wiggling crew members. Terezi, anticipating the shift, crouches and shoves off from the floor, soaring toward the ceiling with more speed than she had anticipated; it’s been a long time since she’s trained in zero-gravity. She accidentally slams into one of the rafters, dealing a blow to her shoulder that will bruise colorfully should she survive long enough, and clings to it, surveying the hangar. 

Vriska grabs her knife and kicks away from the subjugglators. Twisting into a crouch against the door to the hangars, she flips elegantly and hurtles back in the direction of the clowns. She hacks Seven in the stomach before the troll can get leverage with which to avoid her, and hurls the corpse at Four, scattering spherical globules of blood across the hangar.

Crew members take up their own weapons, although at least three float out of reach before they think to react. Nine, Eleven, and Two focus on restraining what prisoners they can, while at least six swim after Vriska. One uses Three as a brace to catapult himself upwards, aiming for Terezi’s vantage point in the rafters.

Watching a subjugglator fly at her with preternatural speed at a directly vertical angle is not a pleasant experience, nor one she ever imagined having to endure. She swings around and slips through the maze of steel bars, wriggling between narrow openings and contorting over impossible angles. The subjugglator follows, ducking with sharp, furious movements, beating his limbs against the bars without concern for his own safety. He pursues like an animal crazed with hunger, and it’s more frightening than being pursued by any intelligent being.

He’s angry, and it makes him stupid. It makes everyone stupid. Terezi would laugh at how hilariously easy it is, to make smart people stupid.

“You,” he says, and he doesn’t finish, because she scrapes her blade along the unhewn the ceiling tile. The metal screeches, and sparks erupt in her sword’s wake. 

“You had a chance to talk! You wasted it yelling at me.”

She darts through a narrow opening that forces him to float around a thick nest of metal bars to keep pace. “Furthermore,” she adds, “this isn’t really the best way to be spending your time —”

He grabs for her. His nails scratch a rafter only a few inches from her head, and she decides that the distance between them is far too small.

“— I mean, you don’t have any backup at all, and you still have several unknown quantities scampering about on the floor —”

A knife embeds itself in the ceiling beside her ear. A trickle of something wet runs down her cheek, which she thinks is probably blood, but as she can’t feel the cut, it’s likely nothing to worry about yet.

She doesn’t bother to wipe it away. Instead, she grips her hilt between her teeth and uses both hands to wriggle herself into a pyramid of rafters, what looks to be an architectural accident but a strategic miracle. He lands, ungainly, against the walls of her cage. The _thud_ rattles her bones. His teeth gnash. She’s never considered what gnashing really sounds like, before, but she supposes it would sound like his aggravated whining, the ineloquent snarl that pupates from his throat.

“You idiotic piece of excrement,” she sighs. “I’d feel sorry for you, if I weren’t so glad you’re as dumb as you are.”

“FUCKING HERETIC —”

“You said that one already,” she remarks. “Do you ever get tired of it, Purple? The praying? The drinking? The killing?”

He tries to wrest himself through a hole far too small for his body. His hands swipe at the air before her face, useless, and she feels a great swell of distant pity. 

“I’ll take that for a no.” She grips one of the bars to hold herself still. “You ever wanted to try something different?”

His scent is an exquisite fusion of bemusement and rage, an emotion lacking a title. She takes pride in it. She’s considered naming the feeling after herself.

One of his hands snags a lock of her hair and pulls. She lets go of her sword, allows herself to be dragged forward, feels the rush of his breath on her face. A second passes where she’s trapped within his arms.

Her hand darts out and seizes his collar, wrenching his face forward against the bars. His forehead slams into the metal, and skull meets steel with an awful cracking sound. 

When she lets him go, he drifts, limp and free, the remains of his face loose with a drunken absence.

“Say hello to the Messiahs for me,” she says. “Dumbass.”

She shoves away from the body, grabbing her sword, and glides along the ceiling. 

The hangar is quiet no longer. Screaming, from everywhere, from both her own crew mates and the subjugglators chasing them, from those dribbling blood — there’s so much blood — it floats through the air like rainbow confetti, most of it in warm colors, but with a few strains of purple laced within. Between them, the crew have killed two more of the guards. Eight left. 

The troll with the throwing stars perches atop one of the ships, flinging weapons with a speed approaching that of bullets. Seven of her crew have formed a ring around her, a line of defense, as she methodically plucks subjugglators out of the air. Terezi makes a mental note to ask for her name. 

Aradia and Vriska have been pushed over to the glass wall, backs against the hatch, with three subjugglators at their throats. One lost his club, but compensates by using his fists to violent consequence. There’s blue blood on his clothes, and Terezi abruptly decides to paint over it.

She pivots and leaps. Their backs are turned, so, none of them notice her descent until one of their comrades has a sword sticking out of his eye. The second retaliates with an attempt at a backhand, but she spears through his wrist, eliciting her first scream, and severing the tendons responsible for holding his weapon. Vriska snatches it from midair, uses it to shatter his jawbone. 

It doesn’t kill him, but it knocks him out, and Terezi doesn’t have the time to bother with finishing the job. Aradia lands a volley of cuts at the ankles of the unarmed subjugglator, but is restrained to a series of defensive maneuvers to avoid serious injury herself. Vriska moves before Terezi can think to, pushing off the glass and wrapping her legs around the clown’s neck, driving the point of her knife directly through the top of his skull.

Aradia shimmies from without the dead troll’s grasp and floats, uneven. “Would kill to have a psionic, about now,” she says.

“I don’t trust psionics in zero-g. They’re too confident,” Vriska says distantly, and grabs one of the corpses to use as a shield for the descending shrapnel coming from the rafters. “Heretical Troll Christ, what are they doing?”

“Don’t know,” Aradia says, “don’t care. Cover me.” 

“What? Why?”

“If I had the time to explain, I would have!”

“You’re asking for a lot of blind faith, I think we’d all appreciate a cursory briefing on what you want us to risk our lives for —”

“Do it,” Terezi snaps, and hooks her elbow around Aradia’s, drawing her behind Terezi. “One bad plan is better odds than zero good ones.”

“Now? _Now!_ With the aphorisms! _Now!”_

“If they kill you, and those are your last words, I’m surviving for the _sole purpose_ of making sure they’re written down!”

“Fuckin’ _somebody_ said I wasn’t allowed to do the poetic bullshit, so _ex-fucking-cuse me —”_

Two and Eleven disengage from a fight with Throwing Stars’ defense line and make their way over, with wild, ungraceful leaps. Terezi nudges Vriska and rounds to face them, adjusting her glasses, bracing herself against the wall.

“Here’s the thing about the metal arm,” Terezi murmurs. “Now, I’m not going to say ‘blessing in disguise’ —”

“Good, because then, both legally and ethically speaking, I would have to deck you —”

“— but I am going to submit a cautious ‘strategic advantage,’ in that, although it’s not going to be all that convenient when ‘filling the one-armed bucket,’ so to speak —”

“I hope those are your last words. I hope they kill both of us, immediately, right now, and those are your last words, not just because it would be _incredibly_ funny, but because it would get you to stop talking.”

“— it _would_ be extraordinarily useful in, let’s say, for example, dealing blunt force trauma to the solar plexus,” Terezi finishes.

Vriska gives her a long-suffering look. Then the subjugglator tries to bring his club down over his head, and she punches a hole in his spleen.

Terezi isn’t actually sure that _punch_ is the right word, as Vriska’s attack is an open-handed one, using the sharp points of her claws to break skin, but as Terezi can’t remember having seen anything similar having been done, she decides to consider it it a very specialized kind of punch. Maybe she’ll name it after Vriska.

“That wasn’t blunt force trauma.”

“Well, fuck _me,_ Counselor, let me try again.”

Vriska grabs the clown by the neck and wrenches her arm out of his gut. Her nails, engraved with the initials of the prosthetic company, emerge caked in intestine. She shakes it, gagging, and turns to the remaining attacker. Eleven.

Eleven does something remarkable, then: she hesitates.

It’s not all that remarkable, really, given what was just done to her colleague, but Terezi hadn’t thought the subjugglators had the common sense to recognize certain death when it brandished a metal hand at them.

Vriska advances with knife aloft, but Terezi puts a hand on her shoulder. She stiffens, but halts, her only objection being an irked grimace.

“You can run,” Terezi says. Offers.

Eleven sets her teeth and her eyes skirt to the door. 

“We won’t follow you.”

She takes a jagged breath.

“We’re not here to kill you. We’re here to run, ourselves.”

“Pyrope,” Vriska warns.

Eleven lowers her club. “What you said —”

Aradia screams.

It’s like wind hurtling down an underground tunnel, rattling the walls of the hangar, shaking the foundations of the ship. Terezi’s ears ring with the force of it, the echoing, layered symphony of voices emerging, paradoxically, from the one troll’s throat, and her nose smarts from the intensity of a foreign scent. It smells like freshly-turned dirt and mist on cold evenings, mowed grass, old attics, dried blood. The block turns cold all at once, ice crystals sprouting from the glass around Aradia’s head like a fungal growth.

Aradia trembles, suspended in midair, her voice trilling the lone cacophonous note. Vriska tenses, hooks Terezi around the waist and hauls her away from the necromancer, sandwiching her between Vriska’s own body and the glass —

Ghosts erupt from Aradia’s body like peelings of her own skin. Twisting and snaring around each other, twining ropes of translucent white, radiating an energy so alien to Terezi that it burns her to be in proximity with. Her skin sweats despite the temperature — when one of the specters brushes across her bare hand, the flesh there smarts as if rubbed against sandpaper.

Eleven is caught directly in the face of the storm. Ghosts sweep over her body with a vicious hunger, circling, swallowing her in swaths of silvery white. Any noise she makes quails before their howling, to Aradia’s song.

Then, within half a minute, they flit away, seeking other targets. Terezi cranes her neck to scent out the remains —

And there’s nothing but a subjugglator uniform, floating freely in zero-gravity, where Eleven used to be.

She chokes. Vriska presses her further into the glass. Her hair billows in Terezi’s face and obscures her sense of smell, smothers her in the scent of the Alternian sea.

Aradia’s ghosts fill the hangar in a sheer white hurricane. Darting narrowly around the crew, barely missing the exposed skin of several unprotected engineers, they seek the subjugglators — hungry, persistent, hunting between ships and chasing their prey from wall to wall. They come even for the dead subjugglators, the ones who bob and twist with the air currents, and cluster around the door —

And then Aradia’s jaws snap shut, and her eyes flutter closed, and she drifts, loose, limp.

The ghosts tremble and fade out of existence, dissipating like fog before flame. Terezi risks a sniff at the block, seeking a corpse, finding nothing. There is no evidence that a purpleblood ever set foot in the area. Only the manifold scents of a crew delighted at its own survival, thrilling in its own continued existence.

One of the engineers shoves himself over to the control panel, face written with nausea, and Terezi is buffeted by a sudden, fervent wave of dismay.

“No,” she says, _“wait —”_

He pulls the lever, and gravity reasserts itself with brutal force.

The landing ships, which had been hovering somewhere near the ceiling, hurtle to the ground with deafening crashes. A few remain undamaged, but all are beaten up, some likely disabled. 

Terezi and Vriska drop to the floor. It’s a short fall, luckily, resulting in a few bruises at best, and she takes half a second to lie on her side and groan. To her great luck, she manages not to land on her sword; going by the varied complaints erupting across the hangar, not all had such good fortune.

Aradia, who had been carried significantly higher than anyone else in her unconsciousness, plummets like stone. Vriska swears and vaults over Terezi, thrusting out her arms and catching Aradia in the last moment before she strikes the floor.

She lays the body down gently, attempting to do minimal damage, and then flops over beside it.

“Ah,” she says. “Fuck.”

Terezi crawls over and sits beside her. 

A second passes. It’s eerily quiet.

Then Vriska _shrieks_ with laughter.

Terezi’s knees turn weak. She giggles, too, made careless and ebullient by her own excitement.

“I thought,” she says, “I thought the plate—”

“Yeah, I know, I know —”

“A depressant? Wasn’t it? Did they get something wrong? How in the name of the _Handmaid—”_

“It was for lowbloods,” Vriska says, words tripping over her tongue. “It wasn’t for highbloods. Outside the cellblock — there was a, I dunno, an activator _,_ or something — they had it wired up to a psychic field in the ship, it doesn’t work in the hangar — least, it’s not a strong, I’m still not all — but Terezi! I can _feel —”_

Terezi feels something intangible slide over her cranium, like the brush of a finger, just as quickly gone as it appears, but she can’t bring herself to be mad about it. Vriska’s joy permeates the hangar, effusive, and Terezi wonders if there isn’t some psychic trickery to that contagious emotion, but being already thoroughly infected, she doesn’t care.

“Incredible,” she says, mouth made loose by relief, and Vriska stutters.

“I — I mean, _hell_ yeah, right? I — _we!_ We’re incredible. You. That was — and then you —”

“And _you —”_

“Well, yeah, but —”

Vriska grapples for words, and failing, she reaches up and hauls Terezi into a one-armed hug. 

Terezi stiffens. Attempts to relax, make herself seem less uncomfortable, which she isn’t, really, at all, even with the cool pressure of Vriska’s metal arm against her neck. The flesh hand rests gently on her hip, and it’s not an unpleasant position at all, no, not really. She puts a tentative hand on Vriska’s shoulder.

“Right,” Vriska says, breath hot on Terezi’s ear. She springs back, straightening her shirt. “We gotta go.”

“That’s true.”

Terezi staggers to her feet. She offers an arm to Vriska for support, who declines, instead hoisting Aradia between her arms. The engineers have already starting swarming aboard the nearest landing craft, a more or less intact ship with _JUGGLER_ proclaimed on its side in white lettering.

Vriska nods to the doors. “Kills me to say it,” she says, “but we’re not free yet.”

 

* * *

 

The _S.S._ _Juggler_ shatters the glass wall of the hangar, takeoff engines blazing, and lays scourge to the bay itself.

It speeds out into the dark sky without ceremony, rocking back and forth as its crew get the hang of its controls, but with unflagging speed, even as the juggalo ship eats itself alive seeking the _Juggler’s_ inhabitants. The larger ship turns and attempts to fire on _Juggler,_ but it’s not nearly fast enough. The landing ship, small enough to weave between asteroids in a field, makes a target near impossible for laser cannons of any significant power or size to strike. And drunken clowns are not known for their marksmanship.

Vriska stands at the center of the bridge, barking commands to her engineers and pilots with such fervency that most of her words are indistinguishable. The gist of her orders can be understood anyway; the vast majority consists of synonyms for _faster._

Aradia micromanages at the helm, interpreting the captain’s demands into more quantifiable orders, and making preparations for a transfer from the takeoff engines to the main power cells.

Terezi finds a nice chair, and sits down in it.

Her enjoyment of the chair — it is a _terribly_ nice chair, too, although having not experienced a piece of furniture with any modicum of padding for almost two weeks, Terezi concedes that her definition of ‘nice chair’ is extremely loose — is cut short when Vriska, satisfied with the crew’s performance on its own, sweeps out of the cockpit, calling for both her first mate and legislacerator to meet her in the hallway outside.

Terezi sighs with infinite regret, and, patting her seat, uses her cane to haul herself out of it.

The _Juggler’s_ interior is black. Just . . . black. Terezi finds it almost unnerving; most spaceships have some kind of interior design, furnishing, or otherwise decorative trimming to entertain the eye. But the juggalo landing ship is built from semicircular hallways, shaped like sewer tunnels, and painted entirely in matte black. Lightbulbs dangle from the apex of the ceiling, sheer white and unadulterated. 

It takes Terezi a while to remember the state of the _Pyrexia_ after Gamzee’s boarding, and she realizes that the interior is meant to be decorated by the juggalos themselves. 

She doesn’t think about the _Pyrexia._ She owes it to herself not to.

Vriska leads them into a small side hall containing doors to the boiler room, which is hot, dim, and a pinch too small for a meeting between three grown trolls, but provides privacy via the high-pitched screech of the boiler. Terezi, upon surveying the hallway and finding no available chair, and settles down cross-legged on the floor. When Vriska snickers, she flips her off. 

“We need a destination.” Vriska leans against the wall, folds her arms. “I’ve got contacts across this system and the next, but the Empire’s probably got them marked as my contacts. Can’t show up there without expecting a full-blown subjugglator squadron.”

Terezi folds her hands over her cane. “Needless to say — likewise.”

They turn to Aradia expectantly.

“Oh,” she says, halfheartedly. “Oh. Well —” She rubs her oculars. “Uh. I mean, I guess. I _think_ I know a guy. I mean, it’s been sweeps since we’ve talked in person, and he’s got — I’ll have to ask him, first. But he’s the kind of guy who — he’d receive us. And he’s, uh. Well. We wouldn’t be expected there, that’s for sure.”

“You have a name for me, Troll Neil Tobin, or are we just gonna address him as ‘that guy’ when we’re paging him?”

She exhales shortly through her nose. “His name is Sollux Captor,” she says, “and he’s in hearts with the Heiress.”

Vriska guffaws. “Holy shit. Holy — you know — I’d figured I knew enough dangerous people, right, being a gamblignant, and then, like, being arrested by Troll Daredevil over here — turns out, hey, I didn’t know _shit —”_

“Can we trust him?” Terezi ignores Vriska’s muttered rant.

“Of course. We’ve been friends since we were wrigglers. He’s a hemoegalitarian, anyway, he doesn’t support the Empire.”

“And yet he’s in hearts with the _Heiress.”_

Aradia shrugs. “She’s an unorthodox type,” she offers, by way of explanation.

“She better be,” Vriska says. “I’m not sailing ass-first into some addle-panned pinkblood’s clutches, Megido, I just got _out_ of prison. At no small expense to me and mine.” She indicates the plate screwed to her head. With a nudge in Terezi’s direction, she seems to imply that Terezi’s injuries count in the cumulative harm dealt to her ‘mine,’ which gives Terezi inordinate pleasure.

“You can trust Sollux. And more importantly, you can trust me. I know the Heiress, too, she’s — well, she’s a lot of things, but she’s not a snitch.”

Vriska blows out a long breath. “Fine,” she says. “Okay. Set a course for Captor, wherever he is.”

“Certainly.” Aradia turns to leave. Then, cringing, she stops — laces her fingers, tilts her head — adds, with reluctance, “There’s another thing.”

Vriska pinches the bridge of her nose and massages it. “Okay. Whatever. Cool. Hit me.”

“The ship has a Helmsman,” Aradia says, unsteadily, gesturing to the other side of the hallway. “I don’t — I’ve never worked with a Helmsman.”

“Oh.” Vriska scrubs sweat out of her eye. “Shit.” She follows Aradia’s lead, Terezi half a step behind. “How — shit.”

“Yes. There’s a control panel, but it’s quite complex.”

“ _Control_ p— Jesus Christ. I thought they only ever gave Helmsmen to the Condesce’s entourage.”

“As gifts,” Terezi supplies, feeling less than helpful, “on occasion, she’ll hand them out. Most Admirals have one. The Grand Highblood has one. I guess some of the higher members of the Church hierarchy get them, too.”

“What the fuck. Does she have psionically inclined yellowbloods coming out of her ass? They’re rare as _shit._ Hold on, where’s the poor fucker’s holding cell —”

Aradia turns down a sharp series of stairs into the belly of the ship, using her wristtop as a lantern. “Watch your step,” she says, and then they’re sinking into a cool, dimly lit block that reeks of mildew. 

In the center there’s a tall circular tank filled with fluorescent lime jelly, thicker than slime, but less translucent. A dark shape bobs up and down in it, wires sprouting from its auriculars, oculars, the back of its neck; its proportions are distorted by the lighting and the fluid, stretched like a shadow at sunrise. An enormous panel sits before the tank, an array of complex buttons and toggle-switches set into the durasteel, and a small stool. 

“Jesus,” Vriska breathes.

Aradia lowers her wrist. Terezi gives the block a quick sniff, but can detect nothing of the Helmsman’s scent. Either the fluid obscures the troll’s odor, or —

“Might be dead,” she says, turning to Aradia. “Can you hear them?”

“No.” She makes a slow trip around the tank, inspecting the block. “They’re not . . . dead. Just. Sleeping, I suppose.”

“Sleeping.”

“It’s the closest comparable state, Counselor, inaccurate as it is. Comatose, perhaps. What happens to Helmsmen — it’s not death, it’s just very, very close.”

Vriska cringes. “And this is the ship’s only power source.”

“No.” Aradia taps the floor with one boot. “Too inefficient. Unless the troll was of incredible strength — I mean, _Condescension_ -class Helmsman abilities — there would be no way to move interstellarly without killing the troll in the attempt. And they put too much money into the harnesses to do that.” Her smile waxes bitter. “God forbid they don’t turn a profit.”

“Less anticapitalist critique, more saving our collective asses. Is there any way to travel that doesn’t involve use of the Helmsman?”

Her mouth twists. “Yes. Activate the auxiliary generators, run on metathorium for the next few leagues. The ship must’ve filled up on Tethys while it was in this star system, she’s got a full tank.”

Vriska rests her flesh-hand on the control panel. “What’s the risk?”

Aradia hesitates.

“Decreased speed,” Terezi supplies, after a moment. “Less power. Probably a loss in cannon capability, that’s usually routed through the Helmsman’s tank.”

Vriska lifts an eyebrow pointedly in her direction.

“The second perigee of Imperial Law was dedicated to the rights and privileges of Helmsmen. To put it briefly,” Terezi adds, more wryly than she’s proud of, “they don’t have any.”

“Great. Lovely. No cannons, less speed, less power. And we’re on the run from juggalos. Who have, presumably, all of the above.”

“All of the above,” Terezi confirms.

“Fantastic.” She rubs the fusion of metal and skin at her neck. “Just to make sure I’m reading this right, Megido: do we know that we can operate this thing without killing the asshole?”

Aradia shakes her head, but says nothing. Her hands play, agitated, over the control panel, drifting over the levers and switches. Her jawline is tight. Her scent bleeds agitation and disarray, and a suffusive undercurrent of loss.

“Training for running a Helm takes sweeps in the Engineering Corps,” Terezi interjects. “It’s a selective position. It’s not something you can rip off Trollipedia.” 

“Could you figure it out?”

Aradia fixes Vriska with a blank stare. If it weren’t for the smoky fury bubbling up from her scent, Terezi would peg her for apathetic. “If you asked me to,” she says quietly, “I would try.”

“Don’t give me that shit. I’m not asking you to, I’m asking you _if you could._ Give me a real answer.”

“Fine. No.” Aradia brandishes a hand at the tank. “Make a decision, all right? Because much as I’d like to stay and debate the merits of troll life, we’re working against the clock, and what’s more, you’ve made your position on the issue _abundantly_ clear, so if you’re going to make me torture someone ‘for the greater good _,’_ go ahead and say it so I can get a head start on repressing those _pesky_ moral convictions —”

“Shut up,” Vriska says tiredly, “and go tell those assholes you call crewmates to redirect power to the auxiliaries.”

Aradia halts, jaw agape.

“You’re not —”

“No. Also, ask if any of them have half a clue how to disable a Helm without killing the poor motherfucker inside it. I don’t think they designed these things to have an ‘open’ switch.”

She closes her mouth and springs to attention, nodding. Her face is schooled admirably, but her relief is difficult to miss. “Yes, Captain.”

“That’s all.” Vriska lifts an eyebrow and flutters her fingers at the stairs. “Better get going, don’t you think?”

Aradia nods fervently and leaps up the stairs by twos. Her wristtop is brought close to her mouth and she whispers orders into it, rapid-fire, hardly pausing for breath, as if afraid that Vriska will change her mind in the time it takes her to glance over her shoulder.

Vriska heaves a sigh and gazes at the tank. 

“Sorry,” she says, as if it’s an afterthought, in Terezi’s general direction. “Guess I should’ve checked with you about it, they’re your odds, too.” She doesn’t sound sorry, really; she sounds sorry that she might have to face an oncoming argument, certainly, but not in the least regretful of her decision. 

“My odds of survival indefinitely converge to zero,” Terezi says frankly, “and have since I met you. What’s one more slim chance.”

“I’ve always had decent luck.”

Terezi blinks. “Decent,” she repeats.

“Mind-fuckingly good luck, then, that better?”

“More accurate, certainly.”

“Well, there you go.” Vriska pauses and traces some lettering on the panel. “I mean,” she continues, “I’ve always had that kind of luck. And, y’know, when you’ve got that kind of luck — you tend to press it. See how far you can go.”

“Does this have anything to do with the Helmsman?”

“Shut the fuck up, I’m getting to it. Sometimes,” and here she breathes deeply, rests her metal knuckles on the control panel, “sometimes I feel like it isn’t luck. Sometimes I think it’s closer to — I dunno. Serendipity. Chance. Because no one _gets lucky_ that often, right? Before it becomes a pattern, and then it’s not luck, anymore, it’s just — the die falling in your favor.”

“I don’t think I understand the distinction you’re making.” Terezi frowns. “Are you talking about —”

“If it weren’t for you, y’know, I’d be dead,” she says. “So many times. But if I’d never met you, I might be alive, I might never have been in danger in the first place. Is that lucky? Is that unlucky? Is _good luck_ what I’ve decided to call a series of decisions which haven’t fucking killed me, so that I can cope with the fact that my life is kind of shitty?” 

She glances at Terezi once, quickly, as if permitting herself only half a second of observation. “I — I dunno. This poor bastard,” she says, gesturing to the tank, “they didn’t ask for psionics. They didn’t ask to be strong, or powerful, or — magic, whatever the fuck they’re calling telepaths these days. There’s no sense to it. It doesn’t make sense. Because if it’s Serendipity, you know, that puts people together, that makes shit happen, then what the fuck happened to _them?”_

She stabs a finger at the tank. “Serendipity. That’s Serendipity. A pool of genetic material coagulates in a certain way and the Mother Grub shits you out at a certain time and you end up bound to a fucking harness for the rest of your miserable life.” She rakes a hand through her hair, tangling at the base of one horn. “I didn’t ask to be Mindfang’s fucking descendant, I didn’t ask to be psychic, I didn’t ask for any of this shit, but here I fucking am, _alive,_ and fucking grateful for it, even though I’m probably not going to last another sweep!”

“Vriska —”

“I didn’t want _any_ of this! I wanted to be a fucking _pirate!_ I wanted to run away and do nothing and sit on my ass on an abandoned planet in the middle of deep space, but instead, I’ve dragged you and all those poor assholes on deck into the Serket Family Clusterfuck because my ancestor decided to get busy with a _revolutionary!”_

Terezi’s hand lands on Vriska’s cheek so fast that neither of them notice it happening before it’s there, meeting with a soft _smack._ It’s more slap than pap, in all honesty, but the situation was escalating quickly and Terezi isn’t used to giving touches that aren’t brutal drubbings, so she considers it a noble effort.

“Sh,” she insists. The sound sizzles out between her teeth, curt. She tries again, softer: “Shhh.”

Vriska blinks several times in rapid succession. Opens her mouth. Closes it. Swallows and adjusts her glasses. 

“Huh.”

“Shhhhhhhhhh.”

“Damn, okay, I’m shutting up, watch me —”

_“Shhhhhhhhooosh.”_

Vriska slumps onto the stool. Her metal fingers scrape against the control panel, carving away slivers of steel. A minute passes in silence. Vriska’s skin is cool under Terezi’s palm. She doesn’t draw it away until the beat of Vriska’s pulse slows once more to its natural two-step throb, even and relaxed.

“Sorry,” she mumbles. “Didn’t mean to spring that on you. That was embarrassing.”

“It’s natural. High-stress situations often have that effect.” Terezi, unsure of what to do with her hand, now free, settles it on her cane’s head. “If I could offer some advice —”

“ _Please_ don’t.”

“Right, well, that was a rhetorical question, because I both can and will. Your opinion wasn’t all that relevant to the outcome. My advice,” she continues, “is that you focus too much on luck.”

“ _Really?_ You’re in the wrong field, therapunishers across the galaxy weep for their loss.”

“Being pale for you doesn’t affect my ability to drub you between the ears, Serket, so can it. My point is more nuanced than that.” 

Vriska lifts her eyes to the ceiling and waves a hand, in a gesture meant to welcome insight. It rolls off her fingers dripping with mockery.

“Luck is shit,” Terezi says. “All of it. Save the Empress, absolutely no one in the universe has good luck. If anyone does, I would like to be pointed to them, so I can cull them in the name of preserving the moral standing and good principles of the Empire.”

Vriska snorts a laugh. 

“Furthermore. You vastly overestimate the extent to which anyone else in the galaxy gives a shit about fortune. If I had thought, when you boarded the _Pyrexia,_ that you were not worth my time, I would have put my sword through your bloodpusher and saved myself the bother.”

She lifts her eyes. “Yeah?”

“Absolutely. And the instant I decide you are no longer worth it, you will have a spectacular view of my backside as I dump your ass on the nearest habitable planet and leave you for dead.”

“You promise.”

“Cross my bloodpusher.” Terezi taps out a toccata on the dragon’s nose of her cane. “Serendipity can eat my nook.”

Vriska smiles. “You’re so romantic,” she says, and it just misses mockery, landing somewhere dangerously close to sincere _._

They sit in silence for a moment. It’s a comfortable lapse. Terezi can hear Vriska breathing, rhythmic and slow, and the quiet rattle soothes. It sings. 

The ship shudders, and starts moving.“Bless,” Vriska says fervently. “When I find a consistent source of income, I’m giving that troll a raise.”

“You can’t afford what she’s worth.”

“The _Empress_ can’t afford what she’s worth. Did you see that bullshit she pulled in the hangar? With the — the fucking magic?” 

Terezi considers it a personal sacrifice in the name of the conversation’s solemnity that she doesn’t make a ‘seeing’ joke. “It was cool, yes.”

Vriska smiles. Genuinely. Her scent becomes gentler. Less metallic, more freshwater.

“You’re running away,” she tells Terezi. “You realize that.”

“I don’t have the energy to feign shock, so do me a favor and just imagine some truly superb demonstrations of sarcasm.”

“Can it. Really. You can’t . . . you can’t go back.” She tips her head back against the wall, and the _clang_ that her psychic depressant sends skittering along the hallway reminds Terezi of her cellblock. “They’re not gonna take you back, after this.”

“Captain,” she says, and subsequently feels alarmed at her own gentility. “They were never going to take me back.”

“The hell are you talking about?”

“I charged the Church of corruption. I might as well have signed my own death warrant.” She shrugs. “They told me to kill you because they wanted you dead more than me, but it’s laughable to imagine they wouldn’t have finished the job, later, in a less public place. Accidents happen all the time.” Her smile is wry.

Vriska frowns. Her foot taps out a syncopated rhythm on the floor. “Why’d you do that, then, dumbass?”

Terezi shrugs. “It was an argument.”

“An _arg—_ you’re kidding.”

“It was one of a limited supply of possible excuses to save your life, and it was more legitimate than any of the others.”

“Huh.” Vriska’s mouth twists, and she sighs. “So we’re running.”

“Are you unfamiliar with the sensation?”

She snorts. “That’s fair. _You_ are, though.”

Terezi shrugs. “I’ll get used to it.”

“Aren’t you pissed?”

“I’m angry,” she says. “Not at you.”

“At who?”

“The Bar,” she says. “Kishar. A lot of people, actually. I think I may be in shock.”

“Oh.” Vriska eyes her up and down. “You need anything?”

“No. I’ll be angry for a while, and then I’ll be disappointed, and then I’ll be all right.”

“Right. If you need to break anything, or whatever —”

“I’ll endeavor to take out my frustrations on an inessential part of the ship.”

“Much appreciated.” Vriska cocks her head. “Guess you’re a criminal, now, aren’t you? Refusing a court order.”

Terezi shifts to lean on her cane. “Technically,” she notes, “I’m still at liberty to carry out the sentence _._ Think of this as a brief delay in proceedings.”

Vriska laughs. “You’re still a lawbug.”

“And you’re still a pirate. Stealing a legislacerator, that’s quite the accomplishment.”

“Steal, my ass. _You_ kidnapped a gamblignant.”

Terezi grins.

Vriska lifts her chin. “So,” she says. “You’re not going back.”

“Not of my own volition.”

“You can promise that?” She shifts from one foot to the other. “Not to suggest anything unpleasant, but if you get hivesick — it’s all of our necks on the line, you know.”

Terezi steps forward and offers her hand.

“No going back,” she says. “You have my word.” 

A smile flits across Vriska’s face. She clasps Terezi’s arm. 

**END OF ACT 1**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The world was on fire and no one could save me but you_  
>  _It’s strange what desire will make foolish people do_  
>  _I’d never dreamed that I’d meet somebody like you_  
>  _And I’d never dreamed that I’d lose somebody like you_  
>  —Troll Chris Isaak, _Wicked Game_


	10. The Second Alternian Empire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“The role of the Heiress is not immediately apparent to those studying troglodytology. That the Empress should tolerate, let alone exorbitantly fund, the existence of what might one day be a regicidal challenger seems contradictory to her principle of absolute, unchallenged rule. But upon inspection, her decision was not indefensible, from a strategic viewpoint. The effort it would take to cull every fuchsia-blooded wriggler produced by the caverns would expend enormous quantities of Imperial resources. And so long as the Heiress was responsible for the care and keeping of Gl'bgolyb, the Empress herself was free to roam the stars.”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

**INTERMISSION**

The _Juggler_ descends through Psari’s atmosphere with the grace of a plummeting featherbeast. 

The planet looks to be largely uninhabitable from space, but then, Terezi is a landdweller. Vast swaths of the surface are covered in oceans, frothing greenish blue, reflecting the color of mint-colored clouds. Islands sprout in a slim purple belt around the equator, and white caps the north and south poles, but aside from those landforms, the world is swallowed by the vast, seething ocean. Nothing about it welcomes those without gills. In retrospect, it’s a quite predictable retreat for an Heiress. 

“Lovely place,” says Terezi. “Hate to live here.”

Aradia looks up from her station. “Because of the ocean?”

“Because of the company.” She tilts her head towards Aradia, giving the impression of her attention. “That’s a stretch of land eight miles wide, maybe. No place for lowbloods. A planet of seadwellers isn’t my idea of a good time.”

“It’s not all that populated, really. Not a very hospitable climate.”

“Climate? What’s the climate like?”

_Juggler_ sinks below the highest clouds and skates over the stratosphere. The islands swell under its belly.

“A bad case of storms and vacationing nobility. The tropics. You know how it is.”

“Ah.”

From the captain’s chair, Vriska calls, “Megido, give me a landing.”

“It’s a city called Ketea. Eastern hemisphere, the only port on the island, it’s hard to miss.”

“People say things like that,” says Terezi, “usually without realizing how good people are at missing things.”

“A revision, then: it’s hard for _me_ to miss.”

“I suppose I don’t have the evidence to dispute that.”

Aradia hides a smile and reaches up to flip a switch over her station. “Engaging landing engines,” she calls, and the ship’s berth opens, extending a spindly set of legs.

“Huh,” she says.

“What?”

“What?” Vriska stands up.

“It’s —”

“ _What?”_

“I mean, it’s likely nothing to —”

“Don’t give me ‘huh’ and then back out, Megido.”

“I’m not getting any readings on the comm center.”

Vriska relaxes back into her chair. “That’s all? You stirred up a federal fucking issue because you can’t find a cell tower?”

“No. Not quite.” She examines the station with increasing consternation. “I mean there aren’t any readings. It would be one thing if no one was responding to our calls. The concerning thing is that nobody appears to be there at all.”

“What do you mean, _nobody’s there?”_

“I mean that it looks like we’re about to land on a deserted planet, Captain, I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Well, find someone, why don’t you.”

“If it were that easy —” Aradia’s lips thin and she hunches over the comm center. “There — that looks like someone. Signal that big, it couldn’t be nothing.”

Terezi grips the armrest of her seat. “To clarify,” she says, “are we in danger?”

“Depends on your threshold,” Aradia says, evading the question. “What do you mean by ‘danger’?”

“What do you mean by ‘depends’?”

“Only that —”

A shudder rocks the ship. Red and blue lightning shatters over the cockpit, sewing itself into the enginery, skittering across the floor in snapping, white-hot bolts. 

“ _Sollux,”_ she shouts, lunging for the comm center. “Sollux, you stupid — _turn on your comm!_ Sollux!”

Terezi hikes her feet off the floor to avoid being electrocuted. Vriska leaps from her chair to quell the rising panic of the crew, but as she opens her mouth, the _Juggler_ falls out of the sky.

The cockpit upends itself as the ship twirls in its descent. Trolls with seatbelts left unbuckled plummet from their seats to the ceiling, tossed back and forth with the current, jittering when the electricity reaches scarlet-sapphire fingers for them. Terezi’s nose burns with the sharp, pungent scent of trolls burning.

“ _Sollux!”_

Terezi grabs the control center, ignores the shock it delivers, and drags her tongue across the display.

30,000 feet.

Aradia stops trying to reason with the dead comm center and instead hauls herself up to the windshield of the cockpit, planting her feet on the glass.

20,000 feet.

Vriska thrashes for a hold in midair; Terezi’s hand darts out and grabs her by the ankle, hauls her down to the dashboard.

10,000 feet.

Aradia slams her boots into the windshield. Heaves herself back, swings forward, does it again. A single crack splinters across the center, but the glass holds. 

5,000 feet.

Vriska’s glasses have drifted away from her face, and her eyes are watering; the tears drift up and away from her eyes in shimmering spherical globs. One of them explodes on Terezi’s cheek. Vriska reaches into her jacket.

3,000 feet.

Another break splits the windshield, and Aradia’s mouth moves in what must be angered shouting, but is lost to the howl of wind coming through the cracked glass. 

2,000 feet.

Vriska draws out her pistol, aims at the windshield, and fires.

1,000 feet.

The glass explodes. Aradia swims out into the open air, waving her arms frantically, and the ship practically rents itself in two with the sudden release of pressure. Trolls spill out of the cockpit heel over head. Vriska holds on to Terezi’s arm and they free fall.

500 feet.

Everything stops.

For a moment, Terezi figures she’s dead. Even if she had stopped falling, the whiplash from that kind of change in velocity would’ve snapped her spinal column. 

But then she notices that she’s hovering a few hundred feet above the ground. As is the rest of the crew of the _Juggler._ As is the _Juggler_ itself.

Aradia drifts out in front of them, surrounded by a crackling halo of red and blue. They’ve come to rest over a narrow airstrip, sprouting from the largest among a cluster of islands. A lone troll stands atop the airstrip, dichromatic glasses jauntily askew, a storm of psionic lightning spitting in the casual curl of his fingertips. 

Slowly, the whole crew begins to drift downward, eliciting from Vriska a fervent series of curses. Terezi grips her cane tightly. 

The _Juggler_ touches down only half-on the airstrip, and the psionic releases it to fall lopsided on the sand. The crew, on the whole, touches down with considerably more grace, although most of them, unused to this manner of descent, drop to the ground on uneven legs and collapse, exulting their survival with profane eloquence. Vriska, for her part, falls on her feet with only some wobbling. Terezi drops on her knees and then springs up, cane at ready.

“Sollux Captor,” Aradia exclaims, alighting on the airstrip before the psionic. “Turn on your goddamn comm station, you paranoid bulgelick —”

“I didn’t think you’d be coming in a _juggalo warship —”_

The troll speaks with a slight lisp, clearly hidden beneath sweeps’ worth of speech therapy, but evident nonetheless. At closer range, Terezi notices the double row of horns sprouting from his hair, the empty holes where his eyes should be, the rich black of his bodysuit. The Imperial insignia is stitched into his breast pocket, but ringed by a white circle, an unfamiliar variation. A huge rubellite stone sits on his finger, obnoxiously large and dazzlingly polished. 

“I said there were extenuating circumstances —”

“What the fresh hell is ‘extenuating’ supposed to mean? I figured you meant ‘nasty business,’ not ‘Church persecution’ —”

“Well, here’s an idea: don’t blow ships out of the sky without _talking_ to them first!”

“And blow the whole operation wide open? Fat fucking chance, AA —”

“Oh my God,” Aradia seethes, rubbing her eyes. “Just — never mind. Everybody’s exhausted, I don’t care, we’re alive, it’s fine.”

“Hi,” Vriska says, alarmingly bright, “uh, nice to meet you, I’m Vriska, this is Terezi, that’s the bunch of understaffed assholes who run my ship, or used to run it, anyway, I think my real ship is rotting on a legislacerator’s battle cruiser somewhere, and that’s Aradia, who apparently tells her captain jack shit about the kind of people she makes port with. Mind telling me who the fuck you are?”

The troll’s resulting smile does not suggest to Terezi that he is a kind sort. “Sollux Captor,” he says, offering a sarcastic salute, “Imperial Spymaster.”

“Imperial?”

“New Empire,” Aradia explains. “Different Empire. What are you calling it, nowadays? ‘Empire: The Sequel’?”

“The Second Alternian Empire,” Sollux grits out, “created and lead by Her Majesty Feferi Peixes, Heiress to the First —”

“So you’re not really Imperial, then, are you? You’re just, like, the people who might, one day, be Imperial.” Vriska cocks her head, skeptical. Terezi makes the executive decision to salvage their chances of making safe port before the two of them destroy it irreparably.

“Terezi Pyrope,” she says, planting herself in front of Vriska and refusing to move. “Ex-legislacerator, recently converted anarchist. The views and opinions expressed by Captain Serket are those of the woman herself and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency of her operation.” She flashes her best, least threatening grin, and crosses her fingers behind her back. 

Sollux snickers. “You talk like a lawbug.”

“You talk like you were hatched without a quarter of your teeth and half of your pan,” Vriska retorts, offended on Terezi’s behalf, and Terezi drubs her on the shin.

“To paraphrase,” she offers, placating, “I’ll speak for both of us.”

Aradia, despairing of both of them, leans forward and murmurs something inaudible into Sollux’s ear. He sighs, lifts his face skyward, and begins trudging off the beach. “This is a bad decision,” he calls, “but keep up, or I’m leaving you behind.”

“What?” Vriska looks between him and Aradia quickly. “What did you say?”

“You heard me,” comes his reply, even though he probably knows it wasn’t what she was asking.

Vriska sends him a distrustful sneer. Terezi hooks her arm through Vriska’s and pulls her along.

Barely a hundred yards past the line of trees, the ground starts falling away from them, slanting downwards so sharply that it takes more effort to stay upright than it does to keep walking. Sollux trots along just fine, psionics sparkling at his feet whenever he takes a misstep, but the crew doesn’t fair nearly as well; they trip over roots and stumble into snatches of brambles, catching their flight suits on a biome the clothes were not designed for. Aradia lands her steps more or less well; the same cannot be said for Vriska, who as the hill declines uses Terezi more and more as a walking aid. 

Then the hill straightens out into a downright canyon, as if the rest of the land had been shaved away. Beyond it, the sea churns, with nothing else as far as Terezi can scent it.

Sollux keeps walking, strolls off the lip of the shelf as casually as you please, and his psionics catch him in a blaze of red and blue. He hovers in midair, waiting for the rest to catch up.

Vriska pulls up short, seizes Terezi’s arm to keep her from walking on, as if Terezi isn’t equally capable of telling that there’s a huge fucking cliff right in front of them. “I don’t know what you’re playing at,” she says, “but the rest of us can’t fly.”

He smirks. “Call it a leap of faith.”

“Leaping _where?_ The ocean? You don’t look like you’ve got gills, either.”

“Do you know the way to where we’re going? No? Didn’t think so. Less questions, more walking.”

Terezi scents the air carefully. The ocean is not the only scent rising from beyond the cliff, but the wind is making it hard for her to read it.

Aradia’s lips thin. She hesitates, folds her arms, and warns him, “You’d better fucking catch me, Sollux,” before holding her breath and stepping off the edge of the cliff.

Psionics knit an aura around her before she can fall an inch, and she floats, too. Exhaling, she nods to Terezi and Vriska.

The air below the cliff face smells like sand, and limestone, and salt. And, faintly, beneath layers and layers of natural materials, the stiff tang of durasteel.

“I don’t have all night.”

“Megido may trust you,” Vriska says, “but those of us who’ve still got working pans between our auriculars —”

Terezi seizes Vriska’s wrist and leaps over the edge.

Vriska screams, once, briefly, before the psionics crackle and they’re levitating again. Sollux takes this as cue to being descent, slowly, as the rest of the crew makes tentative jumps of their own. None fall, as far as Terezi is aware, which suggests that Sollux, despite his sour demeanor, is earnestly on their side. 

Or, at least, he doesn’t find it convenient to kill them just yet.

Once she’s over the edge, she realizes that the ocean doesn’t rush up to meet the cliff face, as she thought it did; hidden at the bottom of the thousand-foot fall is an enormous palace, sculpted from limestone and marble, with a bright stucco roof shielding it from the unyielding Psarian moon. A white seawall winds around the whole encampment, which is at once one building and multiple — roofs rising and falling and slipping into each other, close enough to suggest connection but separation. Elaborate gardens sprawl out from the complex, manicured hedges and rows of aqueducts, and mint-green grasses that fade into white sand that fades into gleaming, glass-clear sea. Tide pools dot the grey rock formations nearer to the cliff, studding the landscape like bluebloods’ eyes. The Peixes symbol is painted onto the roof of the tallest building, twin swoops glowing in luminescent pink.

Sollux carries them down past the entrance gate, setting them before the main building. The crew drifts off to the side of the courtyard, where a set of guards — each wearing a facsimile of Sollux’s suit, with less style — flanks them. He flicks his fingers in their direction, and the crew is herded off down a flower-lined pathway to a different, domed building, with a title written over the entrance in unintelligible script.

He walks up to the broad double doors of the main building’s entrance and looks over his shoulder at them. “If you’ve having doubts,” he says, apparently as an afterthought, “the time to voice them was a couple moments ago.”

“We’re good, thanks,” Vriska says irately.

“That’s the spirit.” He puts his palms against the doors and pushes, and they swing forward. Terezi’s sure that his psionics had something to do with that, too, because they’re far too big for a troll his size to have moved alone, but she hasn’t long to linger on it.

The roof rests on dozens of black marble pillars, lining the sides of the walls and creating parallel aisles along the side of the room. The floor is tiled in white, with a blue glass walkway splitting the center of the room, and at the far end of the ceiling a glass skylight arches upward. The far wall is paneled in clear glass, revealing the sea behind it, and backlighting a massive white throne. In it sits a tall, fat, breathtaking woman, with eyes that glitter the same fuchsia as the painted sigil on the roof. A fluorescent skirt blooms from her waist and trails over the seat and floor around her, and her wrists and neck are ringed in layers upon layers of gold jewelry. A slim circlet rests atop her mountain of black curls, under the twin curved horns that grow from the top of her head. 

The Heiress lifts her head and looks Terezi in the eye.

“This is the legislacerator,” Sollux says, unnecessarily, because Terezi is still wearing teal and red. “That’s the pirate. This is Aradia, you’ve met.” 

The Heiress nods, glancing over the other two with a cursory air.

“They’re escapees.”

Vriska gives him a flat look from the corner of her eye. “Nice job on the elevator pitch, Superman.”

Terezi tenses and examines the Heiress for signs of insult at the impropriety. She doesn’t seem to show any; instead she smiles, toothless, beatific, and folds her hands in her lap. Her eyes drift lazily to settle on Vriska.

Vriska howls _._

She crumples to the floor, clutching her temples, claws digging into her skull and drawing slim rivulets of cobalt. Her guns clatter to the floor and skid away. Her howling shakes a cluster of white featherbeasts from the rafters, squawking with irritation, but does not move a single troll in attendance.

Terezi does not think twice.

It takes a fraction of the second for her sword to snuggle itself against the throat of the Heiress to the Alternian Empire. Guards shout, drawing weapons, and Sollux’s psionics surge from his hands, rushing at the throne — the Heiress holds up a hand, otherwise not moving a muscle, and they freeze. Terezi scents at least twenty guns trained on her head, maybe more; her attention isn’t exactly focused on the lackeys. 

Vriska devolves to a whimper, rocking back and forth on her heels.

“Whatever you’re doing,” Terezi says, pressing the blade’s edge against the Heiress’ neck, “ _stop it_.” 

“If you kill me, the guards will blow your pans out. Silly.”

“Yes,” Terezi explains, slowly, like an infant’s schoolfeeder, “but you will _also_ be dead. Which is an infinitely more potent threat than the death of one excommunicate legislacerator.”

The Heiress lifts her chin. It scrapes her skin against the sword. A rivulet of rich tyrian dribbles down her neck. There are several sharp intakes of breath.

“You have a steady hand,” she notes admiringly.

“I’m not a patient troll, Heiress.”

Sollux groans. “For fuck’s sake, FF. Lay off.”

“Quiet! I’m trying to _bargain!”_ The Heiress rolls her eyes. “ _Cod_. He _never_ lets me have anyfin!”

Vriska gasps for air like a drowning troll, stumbling back on her heels. Her hands fall from her head. Her eyes stream pale blue tears, which she scrubs off quickly. “Fuck you,” she spits, wiping blood off her temples. “Bitch.” 

Terezi pulls away her sword and wipes the Heiress’ blood off with a thumb. Thoughtfully, she pops it in her mouth.

“Oh. _Ew._ That’s disgusting. That is — that is absolutely disgusting.” Sollux covers his eyes with one hand.

“Interesting.” Terezi smacks her lips. “Yours is a very unique taste, Heiress! I’ve never had _tyrian_ before.”

“Fucking rainbow drinker ass bullshit — FF, are you gonna deal with these losers or what?” Sollux crosses his arms.

She huffs. “I was _going_ to. Anyway,” she says, crossing her legs. “I got a nice peek at your history in that pirate’s pan, Coun-sailor. You haven’t been a very good lawyer.”

Terezi shrugs.

“Do you have anyfin to sea for yourshellf?”

“I rarely see things at all,” Terezi submits dryly, which draws a wet chuckle from Vriska but fails to amuse the Heiress. Perhaps the worth of a good blind joke is lost on her. Picking fun at the fish puns was probably a bad move.

“I’ll put it another way,” she says, steepling her fingers. “What do you want?”

Aradia sucks in her breath and presses her lips together, glancing between Terezi and the Heiress with a fervor that suggests the question is more significant than it sounds. 

If Terezi had not been trained from a young age in aristocratic doublespeak, it might have daunted her.

As it is, she sheaths her sword and says, “Shellter.”

Feferi smiles, and Aradia lets her breath go.

“Shell-ter,” she muses, drawing out the nautical syllable. “A lot of people ask for that! Well. ‘A lot,’ relatively.” She turns to Sollux, cradling her chin on one palm. “How many people do we usually get around here, Solly?”

“Solly,” Aradia mumbles, fighting a smirk. Sollux grinds his heel into her foot. 

“Not many.”

“Not many! That’s as helpful as a bicycle to a shark,” she sighs, and looks back to Terezi. “You get the point.”

“I’m not sure that I do.” 

Feferi drums her fingers on her armrest. “What can you give me,” she says, “in exchange for my help?”

Vriska staggers to her feet, glaring daggers. Terezi ignores her.

“What do you want?”

“That’s a pretty broad question, lawfish!”

“I would offer money,” Terezi says, “but you obviously don’t need that. In that vein of thought, you can buy anything we might trade. You seem to have all the staff you need, so indentured servitude’s out. I’m also going to preemptively take slavery off the table — nothing personal, you understand, but I’ve been developing a moral compass recently, and it’s a terribly inconvenient experience.” She pauses. “I’m not _diametrically_ opposed to prostitution, but we hired an ugly bunch, so I figured that was a dead end from the get-go.”

Nobody laughs. The subjugglators were an easier crowd than this.

“I reiterate, then,” she adds, “what do you want?”

Feferi’s lips curl up, slowly, and then all at once. “What do you know about the Second Sufferer?”

Vriska stiffens at her shoulder, showing her hand. Terezi weighs her options and elects to keep her face blank. “There’s two?”

“Yes! Two. Well. There was one, and then they killed him, and now there’s another. On Alternia.” She folds her hands in her lap, prim. “The descendant of the Sufferer himshellf.”

“No shit,” Vriska says, and Terezi barely restrains herself from delivering a drubbing for the interruption.

“None,” Feferi agrees brightly. “And he so happens to be very anti-Imperial! For obvious reasons! So he and I have an understanding.”

Terezi doubts it’s an arrangement between equals. “Define ‘understanding.’”

“I send him resources,” she says, far too bubbly for a troll discussing high treason, “and he promises to stir up the rabubble on my side! Rabble,” she adds, “sorry.”

“Resources meaning . . . troops? Food? Ships?”

“All of the above. Except for trolls, of course. They do most of the recruiting themshellves.” She folds her hands. “The point being, I’m running a revolution out of my backdoor, and I have some things that need doing on that side of the galaxy! Things that I can’t really pop out of the hive for.” Terezi’s uncertain if she’s dropped the fish puns unintentionally, or if the seriousness of the subject has compelled her to take a break. 

“Before you what?” Vriska’s eyes narrow. “What do _you_ need a messiah for?”

Feferi straightens her spine, as if perceiving the insult. “Appeal,” she says. Touches her throat. “I’m the wrong color to go around recruiting.”

“So, what? You’re going to commandeer a lowblood rebellion to put another seadweller on top?”

The edge in Vriska’s jab surprises Terezi. She almost reaches out to touch Vriska. Doesn’t. Decides that it would be a bad idea to wax pale now, in front of the Heiress, with the fate of their crew resting on her composure.

Feferi’s lip curls. “I didn’t commandeer anything,” she says, enunciating her consonants. The lack of fish puns makes itself apparent, and it’s a chilling absence. “I commissioned it. They wouldn’t exist without me, they’d have been wiped off the map sweeps ago. Where do you think they got ships, food, clothes, weapons? Troll Santa Claus? So pardon me for wanting to make sure that they have a monarch who knows her way around interstellar politics!”

“How do you know anything about politics, if you’ve been hiding from the real thing your whole life?” 

“Captain Serket speaks without thinking,” Terezi interrupts, stepping between Vriska and the Heiress. “She is unused to dealing with nobility. Forgive her.”

“ _Unused,”_ Vriska snarls, “I was in spades with the Admiral, I’ll show you fuckin’ _unused —”_

“The Admiral?” Feferi’s eyes glint, and she leans forward, her scowl wiped from her face as quickly as it came. “Not Admiral Ampora?” 

“’Course it was Ampora, we’ve only got one Admiral.” Vriska folds her arms. “I know the way you fish people think, is what I’m saying. And it’s never generous.” 

If this irks Feferi, she doesn’t show it. In fact, she ignores the remark entirely. “When was this?” She gestures to Sollux. “It can’t have been b-reef-ore the duel, otherwise Sol would’ve recognized you.”

“I dunno if you know this,” Vriska says, tone dripping unimpressed sarcasm, “but he’s a bit of a hemocasteist, so he was never keen on showing his blueblood quadrant off to all his mates.”

“Spades!” She laughed, high and chittering, more like a dolphin than a troll. “I didn’t think he could do it! I was his diamond, for a while,” she adds, casually, as if she hadn’t just stunned both Vriska and Terezi into a momentary silence.

“You were that fishfucker’s _moirail?”_

“I get the feeling that I’m supposed to be offended at that,” Feferi says mildly, but nods in affirmation.

Vriska rocks back on her heels.

“Quadrants with the Heiress,” she murmurs faintly. “Head of the Imperial Fleet, and he was in quadrants with the goddamn Heiress.”

“Not simultaneously,” Feferi says. “He joined the Fleet after I dumped him. I think it was supposed to be some kind of cray-sea revenge thing! But it didn’t work out, because I didn’t care.” Her grin is broad and guileless, reveling in her ex-palemate’s humiliation. “Did you dump him?”

“Obviously,” Vriska says, sounding offended that any alternative could be considered.

“Was it hard?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” she agrees, and then — “or, I guess _you_ would, wouldn’t you?”

“Obviously! I had to block him on Trollian afterward. He wouldn’t shut up about it.” Her mouth twists sourly. “It was a pain in my bass, I’ll tell you that.”

Vriska clearly isn’t as motivated to camaraderie by the connection as the Heiress is, but that doesn’t matter, as the Heiress’ mood matters more, given the circumstances. Terezi pounces on the opportunity. “You said you wanted something,” she suggests, even though the Heiress didn’t. “Related to the Alternian uprising.” She deliberately avoids the term _lowblood,_ aware that there lies tender ground.

“Yes.” Feferi leans back against her throne. “You sea, when I was in the sailor’s pan, I figured out some things about her ancestor! And wouldn’t you know it — some reel-y interesting things about her old hagfish.” She smiles, and all of her teeth are as jagged as a shark’s. “Yours, too, Coun-sailor.”

“Mine,” Terezi repeats slowly. “What, Your Majesty, did you find about _my_ history in the Captain’s head?”

Her eyebrow lifts. “Nothing I should be telling you before she does,” she answers, infuriatingly cryptic, and barges on. “Anemoneway. My price is your help.”

Sollux coughs. “FF,” he mumbles, “you wanna talk about this—”

“Help?” Vriska cocks her head. “What kind of help?”

“With the revolution, silly. You can’t offer me anything else.” 

“How do you expect us to help run a revolution? We’re just two trolls. You need legions.”

“No,” Feferi says simply. “I need _management_. I can’t run a full-scale operation from here, across the galaxy, and all the higher-ups there are olive or lower. And I can’t send my smartest people to run it, because I need my smartest people here, advising _me.”_ She gestures to the trolls lingering in the eaves of the room, wearing richer clothes than the rest. “But you two! You’ll do just fine!”

“Your Majesty,” Terezi says, drawing out her words for emphasis, “I am a legislacerator. I don’t know how to run revolutions.”

“You’ll learn,” Feferi says dismissively. 

“I am, in fact, completely emblematic of the old world order that the Second Sufferer will be preaching against.”

“No,” the Heiress explains, as if she’s talking to a wriggler. “You’re emblematic of change! If a legislacerator can fight the system, why can’t anybody else?”

It’s so naïve that Terezi thinks, for an instant, that Feferi must be bullshitting her. There’s no way she can believe that. Terezi will be torn apart the minute her feet touch the ground. And if _she’s_ not —

“What do you need me for, then?” Vriska gestures to herself. “I wouldn’t call myself highblood, but I’m no fit for a lowblood revolution, either. Far as the spectrum goes, blue’s not a bad place to be.” 

Feferi blinks. “Are you a casteist?”

“Of course not.”

“Are you a hemoegalitarian?”

Vriska shifts. “It’s not a terrible idea,” she concedes. “I’m not staging revolts, or anything, but I always figured the anticasteists had their bloodpushers in the right place.” 

“Well, there you go,” Feferi chirps. “Just tell them that.”

Terezi stifles a rude guffaw.

“We’ll think it over,” she promises, before Vriska can sully the bargain. “And in exchange, you’ll help us?”

“We can work somefin out,” Feferi agrees, all agreeable charm. 

“You’ve got a deal.” Vriska makes a startled noise of objection, but Terezi pays her little attention. She approaches the throne and offers a handshake.

Feferi stares at it for a moment, confusion knitting her brow, before gingerly placing her left hand on top of Terezi’s, delicately draping her fingers over Terezi’s palm. Improvising, Terezi plants a kiss on her largest ring, with as much flair as she can summon, and backs away as quickly as possible. From close range, she can smell the cut on the Heiress’ neck, already sealed over and beginning to scar.

“Nice save,” Vriska mutters. Terezi deliberately treads on her foot, and murmurs an insincere apology.

“Sollux will take you to your room, Coun-sailor,” Feferi chirps. “And I’ll sea what I can do about that thing in your pan!”

Vriska’s stiffens. “I don’t want anybody poking around in my head,” she says uncertainly.

“Oh, relax! It’s just a quick sturgeonry.” 

Vriska squints.

“Surgery,” she sighs. “I mean surgery! You’re no fin.” 

“Unless you’d rather have a metal plate in the back of your skull,” Terezi suggests, quietly, and Vriska’s shoulders sag. Folding her arms, she gives a curt nod.

“Excellent!” Feferi gestures to a guard at her three o’clock and points to Vriska. “Take her to the Med Wing,” she orders. “Then take her back to — well, find wherever the other one is, and take her there.”

Terezi snorts. Vriska glares at her.

The guard pales, but nods. Terezi supposes it’s the only thing he can do, really, despite the nature of the task. 

Sollux beckons Terezi and makes to leave through a small door behind the throne. Aradia hovers next to him, attempting a joint exit, when Feferi says, in a voice tinkling and imperious, “I didn’t sea _you_ could go, missy!”

Aradia stiffens. Sollux touches her elbow, once, with what he seems to think is a comforting expression, and then gestures again to Terezi, mouthing, _let’s go._

“If I’m not back in a couple hours,” Vriska mutters, “Come find me, and bring your swordstick.”

“Must you believe everyone is out to kill you?”

“Do _you_ trust her?”

Terezi’s lips thin. “There are better places,” she says, “to discuss one’s opinions about a rich benefactor than in front of said benefactor.”

Vriska mutters something indistinct, punches Terezi on the shoulder, almost hard enough to bruise, by way of saying goodbye, and then saunters off in the direction of her escort. Terezi follows Sollux, ignoring Aradia’s wide-eyed look of alarm. She’ll probably be fine. And if she’s not —

Terezi doesn’t trust anyone in the whole palace except Vriska, but Aradia trusts Sollux, and Sollux trusts Feferi. And Terezi still has her sword. 

Sollux winds his way into a wide marble hallway lined with rich fuchsia banners, each depicting a different variation of the Peixes sign. Some of them are the normal Imperial standard; others are encircled by different shapes, bear elaborate flourishes at the end of the curves, twist in asymmetric ways. At the end of the hallway, over two broad oak doors, sits the Imperial Symbol, two black curves with a single flat bisector. When Terezi sniffs over her shoulder, she sees the symbol on Sollux’s jacket hanging over the door to the throne room — indistinguishable, except for the white circle around it.

“The Hall of Heiresses,” Sollux says, clearly reluctant to play tour guide. “FF’s not the first one to live here.”

“Do they design their own?”

“Most of the time. They hatch the same symbol as the Empress, but after Conscription, when they head out to this place, they develop their own. To look different.”

She counts at least two dozen banners in the hall, probably more — they’re printed in double-rows across the walls, and some even dangle from the ceiling. A veritable sea of fuchsia. “How many Heiresses have lived here?”

“Count,” Sollux suggests, unhelpfully, and walks faster.

“Jeez. I was just asking a question, Mr. Appleberry!” She trots to keep up with him. He’s freakishly tall, steps twice as long as hers.

“Mister _what?”_

“So does she get a Conscription order to come live out here?” He flings open the door with his psionics and doesn’t bother to hold it for her; she darts through behind him. “I mean, how did she know this place existed?”

“Her lusus told her.”

“And her lusus just . . . let her go?”

“Her lusus is a horrorterror,” he says. “It’ll kill half the population if someone doesn’t feed it. She couldn’t leave until it was ready to hibernate.”

Terezi blinks, processing the three disparate pieces of information with some difficulty. “A horrorterror.”

“Yeah.”

“You mean ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Daytime’ horrorterror?”

“He takes a couple liberties with the descriptions, but yeah. Eldritch god of deep space. Lived at the bottom of the ocean until she was twenty.”

“And it’s . . . hibernating.”

“That’s what it does between Heiresses. We’ve got an operation running on Alternia to feed it every perigee or so, make sure that if it ever does wake up, it doesn’t get hungry immediately, but we haven’t had an incident in four sweeps.”

“Incident.”

“Psychic attack. If that thing cracks its jaw, it’ll kill a quarter of the hemospectrum.” He takes a sharp left and ascends a set of sandstone stairs. 

“Shit.”

“Yeah, well. You’ll be fine, unless it starts yelling. It’s the lowbloods that have to sweat it. Which is more or less why we’ve had to veto seven proposals from our allies to kill the thing while it’s still asleep.” He uses his psionics to open the doors at the top of the stairs, too. She’s begun to suspect that Sollux abuses his power.

“And you don’t because . . . ?”

“Because on the one hand,” he says, as if irritated by the very necessity of explaining himself, “in the worst case scenario, we can hold the whole of trollkind hostage by threatening not to feed it. Sure, we’d die if it started singing, but so would all the Imperials.”

“That’s not very sound strategy.”

“Yeah, no shit. That’s why it’s the failsafe. And on the other hand,” he points out, leading her onto an outdoor terrace, “if it dies: no more Heiresses.” 

The terrace overlooks a wide courtyard with a stone fountain in the middle. Trolls dart back and forth across the sun-baked stone, carrying buckets of water, spools of metal, clay statues, armfuls of weapons, heaping platters of seafood, steaming baskets of bread. A wall rises opposite the terrace, crafted from sturdy white brick, over which Terezi can see the churning grey ocean. A smattering of ships dot the horizon, fuchsia sails flickering in the wind.

“That’s only a problem if you lose,” she says.

“We’d like to think we won’t. We’re not so stupid that we don’t prepare for it.” He follows the terrace across a small gap between buildings. The palace seems to be a joint collection of structures, connected by sheltered walkways and terraces, encircled by the white seawalls.

“There’s also the fact that we don’t know how to kill it,” he adds wryly, “but we don’t tell them that.”

“Comforting.”

“Exactly why we don’t tell them.” 

The terrace zigzags onto another broad, sandy building, with tinted black windows taking up more space than the walls itself. The sun catches on the broad stucco overhang, creating a shaded porch around the building, and the terrace winds all the way around to the other side. Underneath it, the sand fades into rows of pale green grass, tall enough to reach Terezi’s hips and swaying with placid, idyllic rhythm. 

“This is the guest hive,” he says, and her eyebrows skyrocket.

“All of it?”

“She doesn’t do anything halfway,” he says, resigned, and presses his thumb to the print reader on the doorway. They’re on the second floor, but as there doesn’t seem to be any downstairs doorway, Terezi supposes that’s the only way to enter the hive. The door clicks and slides into the wall. It’s more advanced than the push-pull doors of the palace proper, but perhaps that’s because it’s a living quarters, and doesn’t have as much need for flair. 

“Use your finger on the inside print pad to save your finger as the entrance key. It’ll lock out anybody else. There’s food in the kitchens, and you’ve probably got the run of the rest of it —” He gestures back to the courtyard, the majority of Feferi’s domain — “but don’t try to get through any locked doors. Apart from the fact that you won’t be able to, on the off chance that you can, it’ll be bad for your own health.” 

Terezi pulls down her glasses and fixes him with a stare.

“I haven’t slept,” she says slowly, “in thirty-seven hours. I have not had an ablution in thirty-two. I am going nowhere, Mr. Appleberry, except the ablution trap, quickly followed by the recuperacoon.”

“Good. She’ll call if she needs you.”

He turns to leave.

“How long will Vriska’s operation take?”

The words fall off Terezi’s tongue. She grinds her cane into the terrance and stands her ground, nonetheless.

He shrugs. “Couple hours. Juggalo tech is hard to work with, it’s not designed to be removed.”

“Do you have the tech to perform it?”

“Of course I do. You think your moirail is the first person to come around here wearing a psychic inhibitor?”

“She’s not my moirail.”

“Whatever. I don’t care. Point is, she’ll be fine.”

“Good,” Terezi says. “Good.” She’s too tired to bicker over the mislabel. She waves goodbye, a distracted twitch of her fingers, and then retreats into the guest hive.

 

* * *

 

Terezi does three things in quick succession:

She eats. Terezi wanders into the kitchen and conducts a raid of every cabinet holding something edible, refines the pile down to things that don’t require more than a minute of cooking, and then eats half her body weight in tropical delicacies. Crisp breadrolls and raw tuna wrapped in crisp seaweed, bowls of seafood bisques and chowders and strange fruit preserves, fish cut so thin it tears when she touches it and melts on her mouth, washed down with a strange, spicy tea. There’s enough food in the room to feed a ruffiannihilator squadron after an eight-perigee trollhunt, and Terezi leaves the kitchen feeling slightly sick but still better than she’s felt in weeks.

She washes. The legislacerator’s silk she folds carefully and tucks at the bottom of her bureau, unwilling to part with it, and her armored padding she strips off and puts on the countertop. Upon inspection, there are a handful of bullets lodged in the outer layer, having ripped through the chitin and etched deep into the caviar; she uses her sword’s edge to shave away the damaged layers, leaving a thinner but lighter layer of padding to reuse. The ablution trap runs cold, at first, with water that stings at her eyes and tastes of salt — an Heiress wouldn’t think to clean her guests in freshwater — and the soap smells of foreign flowers. She scrubs herself off, attempts to wash the scent of space entirely from her body, but it lingers. Perhaps it always will.

She sleeps. A recuperacoon twice the size of her own on the _Pyrexia_ sits in the middle of the respiteblock, an enormous white egg-shape with a lip curving over the top to make access easier. Controls for heat, texture, and sopor concentration are on a panel on the wall behind it, although she doesn’t bother with them. She drops her towel and stumbles into the cupe completely naked, an ungainly dive that sends slime splashing over the edge. It’s warm, and stiff from disuse, and the sopor is concentrated to levels only highbloods could afford, and sleep finds her within seconds.

 

* * *

 

She’s awoken by a rumbling that threatens to unearth the foundations of the hive. Alarmed, she springs out of the slime, practically flipping over the edge of the cupe, reaching for her sword before reaching for her clothes. Only after a few seconds does she remember that she’s not on a spaceship anymore, and ominous rumbling isn’t an _immediate_ death sentence.

With some haste, she rummages through the wardrobe and finds a set of civilian clothes. Pants, an undershirt, and a black jacket, all laced with fuchsia lining and bearing Feferi’s insignia on the shirt pocket. Terezi tosses on her armored padding before the clothes, straps her sword to her thigh, and runs out of the respiteblock.

The rumbling gets worse as she approaches the windows. Just outside the respiteblock, there’s a door out onto a balcony, an extension of the terrace that leads to the other buildings, with a set of marble steps leading down to the grassy field beside the guest hive. The grass is thrashing, now, caught up in the seismic dissonance, and a shadow has been thrown onto the lawn. Terezi grips the hilt of her sword and prepares.

A strange ship touches down on the turf just outside the hive, a model unlike any vessel Terezi’s ever flown. Two elegant, angular wings sprout from a slim, oblong body, sinking from an upright position to a downwards-slanted rest as the ship settles into taxi mode. A third wing sprouts from the ship’s roof, ridged and clearly malleable, likely to act as a steering mechanism; the cockpit rises at the front of the ship, curving like the neck of a white featherbeast. The hull shines, paneled in steel black as night.

A door at the base of the cockpit opens, and Vriska strides onto the lawn.

Terezi slackens her grip on her sword and breathes easily again. Vriska looks well; the color is healthy in her cheeks, and she moves with a purpose that she lacked on the juggalo ship. She, too, is wearing new clothes, although she’s found herself a new overcoat — this one in black, not blue — and the hair along one side of her head is shaven to match the space where the panel used to be. She looks good. She looks better than she ever has.

Vriska leaps up the stairs to the balcony, beaming, and Terezi cracks a smile. “You got a new coat,” she says. 

“I know. It looks _great.”_ She points. “Did you see the ship?”

“No,” Terezi says honestly, grinning.

“Shut up. Isn’t she fantastic?” Vriska twists over her shoulder, as if she can’t get enough of looking at it. The Heiress gave her to me. I’ve got a whole crew for her, too, some left over from _Juggler,_ some new ones. Enough to fly anywhere I want.”

Terezi cocks her head at the ship and takes another whiff. “The Heiress gave her to you?”

“Yeah! I thought it was weird, too. But she seemed really sorry about the whole mind-invasion thing, especially while I was still wearing the plate, so she framed it as an apology present. And hey, it’s not like I have a ship anymore, so.” She shrugs. “Who am I to look a gift hoofbeast in the mouth?”

“It’s a very pretty thing.”

“Isn’t she?” Vriska sighs, moonstruck. “God. I mean, I’ll always miss _Vagrant_ , but a girl could get used to flying without having to stop and fix the energy coils every five leagues.”

Terezi walks along the balcony to get a better view of the ship’s cockpit. “What are you going to call her?”

Vriska falls into step beside her. “Dunno,” she says. “What d’you think of _Pyrope?”_

Heat rises to Terezi’s cheeks, swift and burning. “Uh,” she says, bloodpusher leaping ahead of itself. “I think that one’s taken.”

She’s lying, but the gesture is unthinkably pale. Vriska probably doesn’t realize it — Terezi doubts Vriska’s ever made a pale overture in her life — but it would be the equivalent of painting a diamond on Terezi’s back. It’s the kind of thing that she might like, if they were — but as it is, it’s the kind of thing she’d rather not have to think about.

“Damn. What about _Clownfucker?”_

“Sends the wrong impression.”

“Yuck. That’d be your ship, not mine,” Vriska laughs, and ducks Terezi’s meager attempt at a drubbing. “I guess I could go with _Serket,_ but that’s booooooooring.” 

“And an ignominious callsign, if you’re trying to make port.” 

She pulls a face. “You’re right. Don’t hear you making any suggests, though.”

Terezi hums, contemplating, and taps her index finger on the dragon’s snout of her cane. 

“ _Scourge,_ ” she says.

Vriska eyes the ship speculatively. “That’s catchy,” she admits.

“Defined as ‘an instrument of punishment or criticism,’ or, alternatively, ‘a cause of wide or great affliction.’ It suits you.”

“Fuck you. I like it.”

“Knew you would,” Terezi says, not bothering to restrain her smirk, and leans back against the rail.

Vriska drapes her forearms over the rail beside her, tipping her face into the breeze, and closes her eyes. Terezi taps a rhythm on the floor with her cane, a space shanty she’d picked up from the crew on the way over.

Her cane stills after the fourth verse, and Vriska casts a glance at it.

“Is the sword a legislacerator thing?”

“Sort of,” she says. “It’s not mandatory. Most wear them.”

“Why? It’s not enough to be teal, you’ve gotta wear a swordstick, too?”

“A _Calaman steel_ swordstick,” Terezi reminds her. “And, again — it’s not mandatory. But bladekind is the most popular.”

“Why?” 

Terezi sighs. The conversation is going to be ungainly, as it always is, explaining aspects of the courtblock to someone who hasn’t ever managed one. “Showmanship.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“No, I’m not.” She knits her hands. “Trials are open for public observation. It is much more invigorating, and, on the whole, more likely to inspire rousing support for Her Majesty, to watch someone’s throat get hacked out than to watch them take a clean shot between the eyes.”

“I thought you just hung people.”

“Spoken like someone who watches courtblock dramas,” Terezi notes, and Vriska’s cheeks darken, ever so slightly. Her silent concession is endearing. “Hanging is reserved for special crimes. It’s very ceremonial, very dramatic. Gets the crowds going like nothing else! But the day the Cruelest Bar has the money to construct a gallows set for every upstart shoe thief in the galaxy is the day I join a union, because I’m clearly being underpaid.”

“They’d cull you, wouldn’t they? For unionizing.”

“Oh, immediately,” Terezi agrees, “and violently. Socialist inclinations are explicitly prohibited by Declaration of her Imperious Condescension, No. 732, Article V, Subsection Nine.”

“Nerd.”

“You say it like you’re surprised.”

“Is your specibus really bladekind, then?”

Terezi shrugs. “I started training with it when I was three. I never tried anything else. Never took any of the affinity tests; I’d heard that the Academy monitored results on them, and picked out the trolls who tested highest with bladekind. And at this point, it would be redundant to train with anything else.”

“Well, shit, I’m technically dicekind, but I don’t whip out the Octet every time some shit wants to scuffle. Never met someone who didn’t feel a damn sight safer carrying something that spat bullets.”

“I’ll take that into consideration.”

The conversation lulls. Terezi leans against a pillar and breathes in the view. She hasn’t had a view like this in perigees; her cases don’t usually take her to scenic places, and if they do, she doesn’t usually spend much time enjoying the scenery. It feels like she has to reach back sweeps to remember the case she had before Vriska, and she can hardly recall the details. Her memory is a swarming mess of legal jargon and case summaries, rules, mottos, statistics, and a few scant personal incidents in between everything that came after the Academy. She remembers most of her life as a casebook: facts, details, legal precedents, sets of names with a _vs_ between them, neither of them ‘Pyrope.’ She remembers the smell of the _Pyrexia_ right after cleaning day, or rather, she remembers how it smelled like nothing at all, sterile and clean like most of the Bar’s ships after sweeps in deep space. Vriska has never smelled clean, she thinks, and it’s appropriate, somehow. 

Her good mood is flagging, pursued by the questions raised by the _Scourge_. What is the Heiress playing at, giving Vriska a ship? Is she telling Terezi to go immediately? Suggesting that the contract only needs one ambassador to fulfill it? Offering Terezi, wordlessly, the chance to go alone, set Vriska free?

They’re questions, Terezi begins to understand, that are intriguing, but do not change the outcome. The ship isn’t a gift for _Terezi_. It’s an option for Vriska. An escape route. It has bound Terezi to a particular position — a brilliant move, Terezi realizes, a display of manipulative intelligence she hadn’t thought the bubbly Heiress capable of. Because Terezi is undoubtedly the more politically inclined, between her and Vriska, and sending Vriska to the war effort — with her storm-blue blood and her tendency to ignite powderkegs of situations without checking who’s holding the fuse — would be chaos. Because if Vriska gets to go free, then to fulfill the deal, Terezi has to —

“I’m going to go to Alternia,” she says, quietly.

Vriska flinches. “I thought you said you weren’t a Sufferite.” 

“I’m not.” Terezi squeezes her cane’s head. “But I’m not going to get on another monarch’s bad side.” 

“If you die, it won’t matter whose bad side you’re on.”

Terezi shrugs. “You can die anywhere.”

“Yeah, but it’s a lot fucking likelier to happen in a war zone than anywhere else,” Vriska says sharply, and Terezi shrugs again, conceding the point but unconvinced by it. “You ever fought in a war, Pyrope?”

“If you’re referring to the Peregrenic Wars —”

“Of course I’m talking about the Peregrenic Wars —”

“No, I didn’t serve in them, members of the Cruelest Bar were exempt from active service —” 

“It shows,” Vriska says sharply. “Because if you’d ever fought in a war, there wouldn’t be anything in the galaxy that could make you go back.”

Terezi clamps her jaw shut and tilts her face towards the lawn. A breeze rushes up from the sea, buffeted by the palace walls, calming an oceanic gale into a whisper against Terezi’s cheek.

“It’s my ancestry she wants, anyway.”

“So I’ll tell them I’m Mindfang’s descendant.”

“ _What?_ ”

Vriska’s neck makes a noise that can’t be healthy as she turns to stare at Terezi. 

“Unless you mind having your identity stolen. If it makes you feel any better, I can promise you I’m better for your reputation than you are.”

“How the fuck do you expect them to buy that?”

Terezi taps Vriska’s chest, right over where she’d wear her sign, if she were a wriggler. “I’ll wear your sign,” she suggests. “Forge a birthright claim from the Heiress. They’re desperate for messiahs, religious revolutionaries, they won’t think too hard about it.”

“You’re a few shades off cerulean, though. That’s tough to hide if you’re going to be fighting.”

“Mindfang never _explicitly_ revealed her blood color,” Terezi offers. “She wrote in blue, but it’s not like they mass-produce teal ink. Or I could say she filled a bucket with a tealblood. Again, they’re not looking for details, they’re looking for a leader.” She pauses. “And I won’t be fighting, hopefully, so much as I’ll be managing things. Reporting to Feferi.”

Vriska chews on the inside of her cheek.

“Look,” Terezi bites out. “I’m saving you from doing this yourself, and I’m trying to find a way for you to get out of this, so if you could get over whatever dumbass pride you have in your blessed family lineage and maybe give me some gratitude instead —”

“I’m not pissed because you want to _lie,_ asshole!”

“Then spit it out!”

“I’m pissed because you’re going to get yourself killed!”

Terezi stops and her jaw snaps shut. She grinds her cane into the stone beneath her and says nothing, seeking words to describe the roiling knot of emotion in her chest, finding none that are appropriate. She hates feeling pale. 

She thinks, with a quick, uncomfortable jolt of realization, that perhaps Vriska understands more than Terezi gave her credit for about the circumstances of the Heiress’ gift.

“Look,” Vriska whispers. “How about neither of us go, right, we just hop on the ship and fly to the next galaxy over —”

“And have the Heiress on our tails for the rest of our lives?”

“She won’t follow us! We’re two assholes with a skeleton crew, why would she care about tracking us down?” Vriska grabs Terezi’s elbow. “We just got _out_ of a death sentence. Hemoegalitarianism is nice and all, but I won’t die for what’s gonna be to be a footnote in some Imperial schoolfeed, two millennia down the line.”

Terezi shakes her head.

“You know I’m right,” Vriska argues. “You _know_ how many revolutions there’s been. All of them thought they were gonna be the ones to break the trend. She _always_ wins. Always! The Heiress think’s she’ll win because she can’t imagine a universe where she doesn’t. She’s never lost a fight in her life, she figures she’ll win this one. But she doesn’t get that the Empress hasn’t, either.” She digs her nails into the railing. “And if you really want to make a difference, there are better ways to do it than painting a red heretic’s symbol on your back.”

Terezi imagines rows upon rows of fuchsia banners, each lovingly handpainted by a Heiresses who thought herself the leader of a new world order. There is little different about Feferi’s symbol. 

She’s so tired of running. If she runs now, it will never stop.

“Like what?”

Vriska’s mouth moves soundlessly.

“I dunno,” she says, at length. “But you’ll have a longer life to figure it out, if you stick with me.” 

Terezi says, “Or —”

“Don’t.”

“— you could —”

“Don’t say it.”

“— come with me,” Terezi finishes, and Vriska sags, curling in on herself like she’s been struck.

“God fucking damn it.”

“I’m not _telling_ you to go, I’m just asking —”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“You could at least do me the favor of considering it —”

“I have considered it, asshole, and I’ve decided I’d rather be alive than dead —”

“We’d both have better chances of surviving if we were together,” Terezi blurts, desperate, “you know that, you know it’s true, we’re really, _really_ good tog—”

“Shut up!”

“I thought you wanted to be important!” Terezi’s words fly with a speed and a cruelty that frightens her as much as it reminds her of Vriska, and she wracks her brains for when she could have grown so easily incensed. “What happened to that? What happened to you being the best pirate in the world?”

_“You!”_

Vriska rips back her sleeve and brandishes her metal arm, baring it wrist-up. In the moonlight, the rivets in its hull shine, a grey too pale to be skin, claws too sharp to be cartilage.

“You see this?” She raps the forearm. “You got me this, Pyrope.”

Terezi’s tongue feels heavy. Her throat constricts. She wets her lips. “I know,” she says, quietly. “I don’t think I ever apologized for that.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Vriska’s face wrinkles in angry confusion. “No. I mean, they would’ve killed me. _Killed_ me. If I had a different legislacerator, _any_ legislacerator, except you. If you’d decided not to fight a juggalo, any of the times that you _did_ decide to fight a juggalo, if you’d decided to throw the trial like a good Imperial citizen, if you’d done — fuck. If you’d made a reasonable choice at literally any point since I’ve known you, I would be dead. I didn’t think I’d leave you alive, let alone free.”

Terezi’s throat clears.

“And so, yeah,” Vriska says, pulling down her sleeve. “Being important isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Mindfang, may she rot in peace, hasn’t brought either of us a lot of joy, has it? I’m less — I’m different than I was, back then. You do that to people. Change them.”

“Me,” Terezi laughs. Wonders what the Terezi who walked into the _Pyrexia’s_ cellblock, weeks ago, would think of her now. Wishes that she could remember what it was like to be that troll, strutting up and down the deck of her ship in her legislacerator’s uniform without an ounce of shame in it. 

Vriska takes a breath that shudders her body. 

“But I’m not a revolutionary,” she says, gaze fixed on the horizon, hoarse with resigned determination. “I’m not _your_ revolutionary. I don’t care what the Magistragedy said, about Mindfang, about me, about anything _._ I didn’t fall in with gamblignants because of my sparkling destiny.”

“I know.”

“No,” she snaps. “No, you don’t. You — you must think I’m some kind of, I don’t know, wounded martyr. Like think I’m hiding a pusher of gold beneath all the other shit, like I’m — like I’m just _waiting_ for you to _teach_ me how to be good.” She thumps her chest, harsh enough to bruise. “Well, surprise! You’re wrong. This what you get, okay? This is what you’re pale for! You’ve gone through hell and back to keep me breathing like I’m gonna turn around and pull a miracle out of my ass, but I’m not. I get that it’s hard to come to terms with the fact that you’ve thrown your life away for this bullshit, but surprise! Time to face the music! I’m not an altruist, I’m not a messiah, and I’m _not_ interested in revolution. And you know what? I don’t want to be! Everyone in the goddamn universe can just put a fucking _sock_ in it and wait until time runs out, because I will _never_ be a hero!”

She’s panting by the time she’s finished. Terezi’s fingers beat a staccato rhythm on her cane head.

“I never expected you to be.”

Vriska blinks, slightly stunned. She shakes it off quickly. “Good,” she says. “I — good.” Swallows. “Guess you’re smarter than the rest of them.”

“I know you’re not a martyr.”

“Yeah. Good.”

“But you should really stop trying to act like one.”

Vriska chokes with indignation. Terezi hefts the cane and points it at her.

“You,” she announces, “are correct! You aren’t a revolutionary. You’re not a hero, and you certainly don’t have a ‘pusher of gold’ or any of that lyrical bullshit. There are a thousand other trolls in the galaxy just like you. Apart from one freak mutation, Vriska Serket, you are not inherently remarkable, and if you did not share blood with a _really_ remarkable person, no one would mistake you for one.”

Vriska clenches her jaw and stares at her shoes. “Yeah,” she says. “I —”

“I’m not finished.” Terezi smacks her lightly on top of her head. “Do you think the Church would care about you if you hadn’t decided to spit in their face in the most ostentatious way possible? Do you think you would have made it anywhere as a gamblignant if the right people didn’t think you had potential? Do you think the Magistragedy would have labeled you as a threat to the Empire, even though you’ve got the decision-making skills of a pupa and the good sense of a cholerbear, if you didn’t have a lucky streak and a way of convincing people to do incredibly stupid things?”

“I don’t—”

“Your problem,” she decides, “is that you’re not a good person, Vriska, but you are very good at making people think you are.”

“It’s not my fault!” She shoves Terezi, sending her stumbling. “Easy for you to say, you’re in law enforcement! It’s not like I ever got a fucking opportunity — you saw what happened with Aradia? That’s my whole life, right, my whole life is bad no-win choices. It’s not my fault I keep making them!”

“Bullshit. Shitty circumstances are the poor excuses of bad people everywhere.” Terezi stabs a finger into Vriska’s chest. “Only idiots think in binary. If you want to be an average person, go ahead. Go ahead! I really, actually don’t care. I don’t. But don’t complain about how you never got the chance to choose otherwise.”

She hauls herself away from Vriska, putting five paces between them. Silence creeps into the empty space, oppressive and taut. The crickets’ serene hum fails to calm her. She gulps a lungful of Psari’s humid air, holds it for three seconds, and releases slowly.

“You’re right,” Vriska says quietly.

Terezi takes another careful breath.

A nest of red featherbeasts pipes up in one of the trees alongside the balcony. Terezi sniffs and savors the cherry scent, nestled amongst the chocolate and the bergamot.

“I can’t,” says Vriska, and Terezi refuses to acknowledge the ache that flares in her bloodpusher. 

“Okay.”

“I know — I know what you said, and I know what you mean, and — I don’t care the way you do. I don’t want to overthrow the Empire. I want to make it good for myself. For me and mine.” She gestures, vaguely, somewhat hysterically, to the _Scourge._ “I’m not altruistic. Never have been, never will be.” She curls her fingers tightly over the balcony railing. “It’s not fair to them, to their cause _,_ that their big martyr had a kid who doesn’t give a shit about what they’re doing, but it’s not fair to me, either. Neither of us got what we wanted. It’s best if they just — believe I don’t exist. They won’t be disappointed, that way.”

“Okay.”

“I _want_ to care about that kind of shit. You probably don’t — well, maybe you understand. Clearly I don’t know shit about what you do and don’t understand.”

“Okay.” 

“Would you please just fucking _say_ —”

Terezi lays her hand on Vriska’s metal forearm. “Quiet,” she says. Vriska obeys.

“I asked a lot of you. I asked you something that a lot of good trolls would have turned down.” She falls silent, expecting commentary, but Vriska is unexpectedly mute. She soldiers on. “It’s not a crime not to want to risk your life.”

“Yeah, but you do it.”

“I’m not the standard for good people.”

“Sure.”

It’s choked. Terezi prays to whatever troll god happens to have an open auricular that she isn’t crying. 

“You’re free,” she says. “You are at liberty to do whatever you want. You gave a limb for the fight against the Empress. Nobody could ask you to do more.”

“You would.”

“Stop acting like I’m some kind of pariah,” Terezi says tiredly. “I’m a troll. I’m just a troll! I’m not even a legislacerator anymore, after — after everything. My word is not law. Even assuming that it used to be.”

Vriska steels herself and levels her gaze. “I would invite you to come,” she tells her, “but I know that you won’t.”

“Do it anyway.”

She laughs bitterly, a bit wildly. “All right, fine.” She sticks out her hand. “Come with me.”

“No.”

“Right.” She shoves her hand back in her pocket. “Don’t really see what the point of that was, except if you were wanting revenge, in which case, congrats, that stung like a bitch, well played.”

“I wanted to hear you say it,” Terezi says. “I want to remember you saying it.”

Vriska flushes and she runs a hand through her hair. “Well,” she says. “Wow. Well.” Apparently, she has nothing more to say.

At length, Terezi says, “Maybe you’re right.”

“You’re gonna give me a pusher attack, talking like that. Whatever about?”

“Maybe we’ll meet again. When I’m a successful revolutionary, and you’re an infamous pirate. Or whatever you decide to be, whatever side of the law you end up on. I’m not sure there’s a right side, anymore, but if there is, I hope you end up on it.” 

“Thanks. Likewise. For what it’s worth.” Vriska extends her hand again, this time without a bargain attached to it. “My invitation always stands.”

Terezi grasps it. “If I make it off Alternia alive,” she says, trying to sound bright, “I may take you up on that. Won’t be much room for an old legislacerator in the new world order.”

“Here’s hoping.”

“Mm.”

Vriska squeezes Terezi’s arm, and steps back. “Better go,” she says. “Big universe out there.”

“You’d better get a head start on it.”

“Right you are, Counselor.” She half-smiles, but it’s an unhappy thing. “Uh. Well. Bye.” She turns away, starting her descent down the stairs. 

Terezi watches her walk towards the _Scourge,_ hands tucked in her pockets, hair swaying gently in the Psarian breeze. Watches her halt, one foot on two different stairs, pivot, and sprint back up to the balcony, determination carved into her expression.

Terezi’s bloodpusher practically claws itself up through her trachea when Vriska charges up to her, cheeks bright from exertion and jacket billowing in the breeze. She doesn’t know what her pusher expects to happen, really, but it’s obviously a lot more exciting than what her pan expects to happen, because her blood has started rushing so loud she can’t hear herself think and can’t force a word from her tongue.

Vriska pulls up in front of her, reaches into her jacket, and thrusts a pistol at Terezi’s chest. Terezi scrambles to catch it, cradles it with both hands.

“There,” Vriska insists. “You — you wear that, now, you hear? I don’t want you dying because you’re too dumb to carry a weapon that isn’t all showmanship.”

“‘Isn’t all showmanship,’ my ass,” Terezi croaks, frankly amazed at her own capacity for speech. “As if you didn’t pick up pistols because you thought they looked cool.”

“Be that as it may, at least this showy motherfucker can crack a pan open at fifty yards. Learn to use it, won’t you, so I stand half a chance of getting some sleep today.”

Terezi grins. “I’ll do my best.”

“Unless your best includes not dying, Pyrope, I expect a helluva lot more than that.” 

“You are paradoxical and infuriating. I’ll miss you.”

“Yeah. Likewise.” Vriska rocks on the balls of her feet. “So. Uh. Goodbye. For now.” 

“Goodbye.” She takes a step forward, more hesitant than she’d like to be and more presumptuous as she’s comfortable with.

Vriska takes the lead, stepping in, opening her arms — but then she balks, and twists one arm around her back, using the other to give Terezi a rough pat on the shoulder that mutates into a half-bow. “See you,” she blurts, withdrawing quickly, and sprints down the stairs.

She darts across the lawn, a dot of black pressing forwards against the green, and then leaps up the stairs to her ship, taking two at a time, never looking back. Really, Terezi could not imagine a parting more suited to her. When the doors to the _Scourge_ shut, she doesn’t bother closing her eyes against the smoke that pours from its engine ports. It stings her eyes, comfortably close, and she forces herself to stare blindly at the place from whence the machine’s roar emanates, until it slinks with graceful leisure into the sky. Her eyes sting, demonstrating an affinity for feeling she had thought to have been lost to the Alternian sun, and she still does not blink. Smoke, of course, is an irritant, and triggers an instinctive tear duct release. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I am tired of punching in the wind_  
>  _I am tired of letting it all in_  
>  _and I should eat you up and spit you right out_  
>  _I should not care but I don't know how_  
>  —Troll Of Monsters and Men, _Organs_


	11. Gifts from the Handmaid, Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“Disciple, coming from the Latin ‘disciplus,’ or ‘learner,’ a derivative of ‘discere,’ ‘to learn,’ may or may not be an accurate translation of the word used by trolls to describe the Signless-Sufferer’s scribe. The word they use carries more of an intimate significance; they employ it conversationally to mean ‘lover,’ ‘equal,’ or, in the most intimate contexts, ‘friend.’ In Sufferite circles, the word is taken to mean ‘talented writer,’ or ‘great historian.’ In one ancient romantic text, it was used to describe love — a wholistic love which fit no label, but transcended the concept of quadranted romance itself. Other meanings have been attached to the term over time, and cross-referencing texts from different eras will give vastly different impressions of what the word suggested; in the trans-Galactic dialect of Alternian spoken by most Imperial soldiers, however, ‘disciple’ translates to ‘fool.’”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

The recuperacoon holds her for another few hours. It isn’t enough, and she wakes up tired — weeks’ worth of sleep debt can’t be solved in one day. She doesn’t usually sleep much when she’s on a case, but she almost always has a few nights afterward to recover, refuel. She doesn’t usually sleep off cases, either, but that’s a personal decision, not professional policy.

She crawls out of the slime at 9:00, dresses, eats. The guest hive comes equipped with its own wristtop, one linked up to the wifi network, albeit with a different handle than Terezi is used to. The sun is just sinking over the water, shattering pink light across the waves; she contemplates that it shouldn’t burn her, as Psari is further from its sun than Alternia is, and without her legislacerator’s uniform, probably considerably colder. Accordingly, there is no real reason for her to keep a nocturnal schedule — the other trolls, whose eyes are unaccustomed to light, sure — but Terezi is bound by no such rules.

Habit, however, proves stronger than logic. She puts on another one of Feferi’s black uniforms and adjusts the jacket to hide the crest on the front. She’s not one of the Heiress’ soldiers. Not yet, anyway.

After she’s done with an exquisitely luxurious morning ritual, she checks the clock again. It’s 9:30.

She spends another fifteen minutes inspecting the rest of the hive, which is large enough for a dozen trolls to live comfortably and never once come into contact with each other, and then wastes twenty trying to connect to the guest wifi. The husktop they provide is sweeps past any model she’s ever touched in her life, with subtle shifts in the keyboard that make her fingers ungainly and increase her errors. Only after she’s come close to violence twice does it occur to her that her Trollian account is likely being monitored by the Bar, and that logging onto it, at this point, is an exercise in stupidity.

She wastes a whole hour trying not to think about Vriska Serket.

_If it weren’t for you, y’know, I’d be dead —_

She makes a noble attempt.

_You’ve never been pale for anyone, have you, Vriska?_

_No. Never had the time._

An unsuccessful one. But a noble one, nonetheless. 

She closes the husktop and toys with the Sufferer’s pendant. She wonders if anybody in Feferi’s kingdom actually believes in the Sufferer’s ideals. She wonders if any of them have even read his work.

It occurs to her that she’s never read it, either, and decides that being uninformed on the subject, after wearing the heretical symbol on her person for almost a perigee, is probably an ill-advised position.

Most of the Sufferer’s texts aren’t available online, even through avenues of legal research. The vast majority of the Disciple’s writings are reserved reading only for the Condesce’s PR team, who publish hideously malformed versions of the text for the Empress’ important anniversaries. To even find mention of the Sufferer’s name, Terezi has to sift through pages and pages of irrelevant data, which is a pain in the ass but an excellent distraction. 

After near an hour of puttering around with little success, a trollmail appears in the husktop’s inbox. Which puzzles her, as her account isn’t linked up to the husktop, and by all accounts, she should not be receiving mail of any kind from the device.

She clicks on it anyway. Her curiosity has always ruled her.

**TROLLMAIL TRANSCRIPT NO. 001**

_RECIPIENT: GUESTHIVE HUSKTOP NO.3_

_SENDER: [REDACTED]_

_DATE: 3/09/LS/9012_

TEXT

_con2iider thii2 thank2 for 2endiing that piirate offworld_

_and for god2 2ake 2top blunderiing around iin cla22iifiied fiile2_

_youre goiing two fuck up my hu2ktop wiith 2ome godawful viiru2_

**Attachment:** codex_inferus.txt

 

It’s laughably easy to discern the sender of the message, even with the ‘redacted’ bar over the sender line — the sender’s familiarity with her, not to mention a knowledge of the husktop’s activity that necessitates some skill in espionage — which makes her think that she’s meant to figure it out, and that the halfhearted encoding serves not to protect his identity from Terezi, but from someone else. An interceptor, perhaps? But the husktop uses a private network. Perhaps he’s paranoid. At least, she hopes so; it would be disappointing to discover that Feferi’s Imperial Spymaster can’t even drop his quirk when he’s trying to be covert.

She clicks on the link, trusting that he wouldn’t send a virus to his own husktop.

A file explodes onto the screen, pages upon pages of green text swarming the screen as the document loads. Sollux included the whole damn Codex Inferus, all four of the Disciple’s Gospels and the Vast Expletive. Her hand starts hurting in the time it takes her to scroll up to the top of the codex, by which time the moon is high, and she’s beginning to wonder if Sollux just sent it to her out of pity for her boredom. 

**THE BEGINNING OF THE GOSPEL OF THE SIGNLESS, THE HATCHED PURROPHET:**

**AS IT IS WRITTEN IN THE PROPHETS, BEHOLD, I SEND MY MESSENGER BEFUR THY FACE, WHICH SHALL PREPURR THY WAY BEFUR TH33.**

**THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, PREPURR YE THE WAY OF THE SIGNLESS, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT.**

Terezi is sure, absolutely certain, that when it was published, the Codex Inferus was the hottest of all possible takes. She does not doubt that it blew the cotton nub coverings off everyone who deigned to set their eyes — or tongue — on its pages. She is certain that it flew off the shelves, or its time period’s equivalent, and was devoured by angsty revolutionaries worldwide.

This does not change the fact that it is indefensibly boring, and she goes to look up the Trollipedia summary of the texts after five minutes of wading through twisted syntax and cat puns.

Before she can get into the Last Expletive, however, a buzzer chimes, and the hive’s artificial intelligence system informs her that there is a visitor at the door.

After a minute of stumbling around the house, she finds it, and thumbs the print pad.

Aradia stands there, freshly clothed, cheeks bright, not a scratch on her skin. Her scent is sweetly sympathetic, and Terezi wrinkles her nose at it. 

“Hey, Terezi,” she says. “How’ve you been?”

 

* * *

 

They go for a walk along the seawall’s balustrade, where the wind shrieks loud enough to drown out their conversation to unwelcome ears. Aradia says that Sollux hasn’t bugged her or Terezi, but that she also doesn’t trust the subjects of Psari enough to let them within eavesdropping distance of important conversations.

She waits a while before breaching anything important — asks about Terezi’s hive, her comfort, whether everything has been to her satisfaction. She carefully avoids the topic of Feferi or Sollux or anything related to politics, instead touching on subjects like the crew’s accommodations. Terezi’s cane scratches on the sandstone, trailing lightly behind her, and replies to most of Aradia’s questions with quiet monosyllables. After a while, Aradia gets the point.

“So Vriska’s gone,” she says.

“Yes.”

She chews on her cheek. “Did you ask her to stay?”

“Yes,” Terezi says, honestly.

“And she said no?”

“She and I talked about it,” Terezi tells her, choosing her words carefully, “and she decided to leave, while I decided to go to Alternia. We had a difference of opinion.” 

“Huh.” The wind tosses Aradia’s hair in front of her eyes; she pulls it back. “I — well.”

“What?”

“I’d figured she’d stay,” she says simply. “That’s all.”

“Why?”

Aradia’s eyes flicker to Terezi, then away, and she says nothing.

“I told you that we weren’t in quadrants.”

“That is what you said,” Aradia says, which is a funny way of agreeing without agreeing to anything at all. 

“I meant it then, and I mean it now. We weren’t anything.”

She slips her hands into her pockets. “I understand,” she says. “But — and hear me out — I know pirates.”

“If you’re going to give me some bullshit about how I softened her space-hardened heart, or how her secret looks were rich with pale longing —”

“She’s not the kind of person who _trusted_ ,” Aradia pleads, earnest. “At all. Not just ‘trusted easily.’ Gamblignants think friendship is not killing someone after the job’s done. But you —”

“I saved her ass, she saved mine, we didn’t hate each other the whole time. If that’s your idea of a strong foundation for a relationship, I’d hate to see your exes —”

“Forget Alternia,” she insists. “She trusted you implicitly. She would’ve followed you onto the _Battleship Condescension._ If you asked her to. Which makes me think that you didn’t actually ask her to.”

“Overstepping,” Terezi says through gritted teeth. “You’ve passed overstepping, actually, you took a long leap off a short pier called ‘overstepping’ into a body of water most would label ‘intrusive.’”

“I don’t work for you anymore,” Aradia says brusquely, “and even if I did, you don’t have a ship to fire me from.”

“Firing you is far from the worst thing I could do to you.”

“Death threats might work on someone who hasn’t served under gamblignants,” she says, “but they don’t work on me. Gilber’s First Rule of Intimidation, Counselor.”

The corner of Aradia’s mouth twitches up. Terezi makes an irritated noise under her breath. 

“Incorrect,” she informs Aradia, despite the latter’s growing amusement. “The first rule warns against punishments that cannot be enacted, and this one _can._ That you do not believe I _will_ do it concerns the second rule, which reads ‘Never threaten what one _will_ not perform.’” 

It’s a small victory. She clings to it, selfishly, despite this. She adds a childish, “Something that Trollipedia could have told you,” which has little effect but making her feel worse about the matter.

“My mistake,” Aradia says graciously, and immediately loses what scant portions of Terezi’s good graces she had regained by saying, “but Vriska still pitied you.”

“She rejected me.”

Terezi flings the words out carelessly, avoiding bitterness in favor of cold detachment. Aradia stops walking and scans her face for lies, brow knitting. Her mouth opens, but words fail her.

“Throws a wrench in your theory, doesn’t it?” Terezi is aware that she could handle the situation with more dignity, but she feels justified in her insolence. “Satisfied?”

“I’m sorry,” Aradia says, with a softness that irritates Terezi more than it soothes.

“Sorry for what?” She starts walking at a brisk clip. “Sorry I broke protocol for a gamblignant? There’s no reason to be. It was my own error.”

“Now, hold on —”

“Unless you’re apologizing for poking around in my business, in which case, consider the apology reluctantly accepted.”

“It’s not an _error,”_ Aradia declares, jogging to catch up. “And even if she didn’t say she did, the point stands—”

“You must be insufferable to have in quadrants! ‘Even if she didn’t say she did.’ What if she said she didn’t? Would you admit that evidence, Officer? Or would you like to pop off a message telling her how she feels? Because I think you and her have conflicting interpretations on the subject.”

“We just might,” Aradia says tightly, “because she’s an emotionally repressed wreck, and if you can’t tell that much then it’s no wonder you think she doesn’t like you.”

“Everyone around here is emotionally repressed, Megido, it’s the only way any of us are still alive.”

“Stop being clever and _listen_ to me,” Aradia snaps, and Terezi pays brief mind to the quip she could have made at that, but lets it slide. “I’ve never met a seagrift who knew what to do with themselves in the red quadrants. That doesn’t mean Vriska didn’t — feel anything.”

“I’m not stupid.” Terezi slows down, lets Aradia keep pace more comfortably. She takes deep breaths and releases her agitation. Organizes her thoughts in orderly lines of logic and voices them, point by point, building an argument. It calms her. “I know she liked me. Pointing out that you overstate the nature of our relationship is not equivalent to understating it.” 

Aradia turns her face to the ocean and takes a short breath. “I didn’t like Vriska,” she says. It’s stated matter-of-factly, without resentment, without intent to insult. Her ability to speak dispassionately about her own affairs has always impressed Terezi, and it impresses her now. “It’s no secret. I haven’t liked her since we left New Bellona, and I don’t know if I ever will. I haven’t had time to think over what happened, time to grieve. I certainly haven’t had the time to forgive, if there’s even enough time in the universe for that.” 

She looks at Terezi evenly as she says, “I don’t know if I’ve forgiven you, either.”

Terezi squares her jaw and nods, taking it silently.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t like you, though,” she muses. “I admire you. I like talking to you. I think you’re going to be a great revolutionary, with a mind like yours, and that excites me. You think about people. You _care_ about people. That’s why I haven’t forgiven Vriska, and I might be getting there, with you.”

Although she pauses, it seems more an interlude than a conclusion. Terezi remains quiet.

“Point being — I’m not saying this out of some frivolous concern for your personal affairs. If I _wanted_ quadrant drama, I’d watch TrollMTV.”

Terezi’s antipathy lessens, somewhat, and she finds herself listening more charitably. Aradia lifts her chin.

“I’m saying this because I think you worked well together,” she says, “and I think you’d be better off if she was here.”

“Well,” Terezi says. “That’s an interesting theory. It will remain a theory, however.”

Aradia sobers, nods, looks away. “Fair,” she says. “I apologize, but I won’t say I was wrong.”

“Those,” Terezi remarks, “were the last words of a very famous Orphaner.”

“What happened to them?”

“Told a bad joke,” she says, and comes to a halt. They’ve reached the far end of the balustrade, where the seawall curves away from the ocean and arcs toward the cliffside. “What did the Heiress want with you, yesternight?”

Aradia’s mouth flattens into a line. She waits a moment before answering. “I’m not sure,” she says, and she doesn’t smell like she’s lying, but there’s an undercurrent of restraint to her scent that suggests she’s not being entirely honest. 

“You were there for a full day. You must have talked about something.”

“She wanted to talk to me about Sollux,” Aradia says, and the bemusement in her tone is genuine, at least.

“Her matesprit? Her attack barkbeast? Her spymaster, Sollux?” Terezi lifts an eyebrow. “What do you know about Sollux that she doesn’t?”

“I don’t think it was so much a matter of what I know as — her knowing what I know,” she says slowly. “She wanted to . . . analyze me, I think? See if I was a threat.”

“To her relationship, or her regime?”

“Both. Although the latter, more than the former. She’s got Sollux wrapped around her smallest prong digit.” 

“Huh.” Terezi considers the Heiress’ eerie, exuberant smile, the undercurrent of threat to her benevolence. Her expression never changed when she looked at her matesprit. “How does she think you’re a threat?”

“I hear dead people,” Aradia says simply. “There are a lot of dead Heiresses hanging around this place. I doubt half the people here would stay if they knew the success rates of Feferi’s predecessors.”

A chill lifts the hairs on Terezi’s forearms, even through the layers of chitin. “I imagine it would be a simple leap of logic,” she says, ignoring the implication of phantom royals haunting the island. “The Empress is still the Empress; ergo, she hasn’t been unseated yet.”

“They don’t know there have been others.”

Terezi supposes that makes sense. Perhaps Feferi is inordinately skilled in gathering support, compared to her sisters. “And did she want anything from you? Besides silence, obviously.”

Aradia rests her elbows on the edge of the balustrade and takes deep lungfuls of the sea air. “I don’t know,” she says, and the tone walks the line between relieved and disturbed. “After she figured out that I wasn’t a threat to her, she just . . . let me go.”

“That seems uncharacteristic.”

“She couldn’t kill me, not if she wanted to keep Sollux on her side, but I’m also a threat to her, so it’s not as if she wants me near. I think she suggested that I could . . . that I _should_ leave, if I wanted to, that she’d give me a ship and a crew to do it with. Just — get out of her hair, I think was the general implication.”

“You don’t offer much by way of strategy,” Terezi offers. “If it makes you feel better, she’d have said the same thing to me and Vriska, if she didn’t have Mindfang’s blood and I didn’t have a law degree.”

“But I have neither.”

“Exactly. Unless you have an ancestor that you haven’t told me about.”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Aradia laughs. “Lowbloods don’t put stock in birthright, Counselor. Mostly because we usually don’t have any.”

“Fair enough.” Terezi taps her cane on the walkway thoughtfully. “So where are you going?”

“I don’t know.” She takes a piece of her hair and works the tangles out of it, seeking something to do with her hands. “I’ve still got a few contacts in Port Imperial, but I don’t know how closely the Empire is looking for me. I was one of their prisoners, once, but they’ve got bigger fish to make attempts at frying.” She gestures to Terezi, the implication clear. 

“Granted. But New Bellona can’t be the only planet you’ve got contacts on.”

“No, but you said it when we met: my record isn’t an attractive one. I made do in Port Imperial because the whole city’s a scumhive, and nobody’s got many standards, but the kind of jobs you find there don’t improve your record, either.” She takes a deep breath and blows it out through her lips. “I’ve lost half the crew I came to you with, and the half that’s left doesn’t want to leave. Feferi’s happy to keep them, they’re more supporters, as far as she’s concerned, but it leaves me high and dry.”

“She did say she would provide you with a crew,” Terezi points out.

“Sure, but they’d fly _under_ me. I’m not a captain. I don’t know where I want to go, what I want to do. I get paychecks, I don’t sign them.”

Several points of logic fall into place at once, then, and Terezi makes a decision. 

“It’s hard to get good help,” she says. “I don’t trust Feferi’s people not to dump me on my ass the first time the going gets tough, and I’d feel more comfortable flying into an active war zone if I’ve got someone I know calling the shots.”

It’s as close to outright plea as she dares go. Aradia understands, and a smile splits her face.

“I was wondering if you were going to ask.”

“Ask what?” Terezi says lightly. “I haven’t asked you anything.”

“Couldn’t tell if you would, actually, especially after the forced impromptu feelings jam. I’ll admit, I really was prepared for you to tell me to fuck off.”

“I just thought that since you’ve got more skin in the game, so to speak, than either Vriska or I — it’s a lowblood revolution, and all, might help to have a lowblood telling us what the hell we’re supposed to be doing —”

“Are you actually going to ask, or are you going to make me volunteer, like the emotionally constipated lawyer you are?”

“— can’t believe I’m letting you off with this kind of disrespect. You do realize that standing here and insulting me isn’t actually an answer, correct?”

“I’ll go,” Aradia says gently, over quiet giggles. “It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

Terezi smiles briefly, but grows solemn. “You’ll be risking your life,” she hedges, unwilling to put any effort into dissuading Aradia, but loathe to send the woman into danger without full disclosure. 

“Wow,” Aradia deadpans. “What an experience. I wonder what it will be like.”

“Very funny, Officer, but you _will_ be. It’s a revolution. You’ll be guilty of High Treason, first degree, the sentence for which isn’t difficult to guess.”

“Is it death? Trollipedia said it was death.”

“I’m not joking,” Terezi insists, raising her voice. She hardly understands her sudden impulse to make clear the endeavor’s perils, but it remains, all the same. Guilt, perhaps, or some leftover angst from her own decision to go — talking through Aradia to herself, in the past. “Are you willing to die for this? This — this princess’ pet revolution?”

Aradia gives her an evaluative glance.

“For someone who dresses like a Sufferite,” she says, “you’re not very passionate in recruiting for their cause.”

Terezi pulls out the Sign from under her chitin. Aradia, to her credit, registers surprise for only a fraction of a second before blinking away her incredulity.

“I have seen this symbol twice,” she says. “Both times, it was hanging around a dead troll’s neck.”

Aradia’s eyes linger on it, and then she nods. “Okay,” she says. “How about this: my blood is a shade off the Sufferer’s. I have always had ‘skin in the game,’ so to speak.”

Terezi lets the chain fall back underneath her clothes. “Fair.”

“So.” Aradia claps Terezi on the shoulder. “I’ll go speak to the Heiress about accommodations for passage to Alternia — say, next evening?”

“Make her give us one of her luxury ships. I’m riding to my death in style.”

“Noted.” Aradia smiles. It stretches across her face with morbid excitement. “Smell you later, Captain.”

She darts off before Terezi can correct her.

* * *

 

Terezi contemplates going back to the Codex after Aradia leaves. It is a brief consideration, because shortly thereafter, she remembers Sollux making the egregious mistake of telling her about the castle’s locked doors, and thereby issuing a challenge to her hivebreaking abilities.

Before attempting anything, she returns to the main courtyard and observes. Feferi’s citizens seem unbothered by the threat of Imperial persecution lingering over their heads — they tread back and forth freely, exchanging cheery remarks about the weather, the climate, mild inquiries into each other’s affairs. They’re mostly sequestered on the warm half of the hemospectrum; only a handful of trolls have blood touching the cooler side of green. Terezi is the coldest on the island, with the exception of their ruler, so far as she can smell.

They all wear what Terezi presumes must be battle suits, if they’re anything like Terezi’s, but they move like they don’t know what it’s for. She doesn’t see any of them carrying specibi. They make weapons, obviously, because she smells a couple of them pushing carts of the things across the courtyard, but none of them bother wearing any. It’s bizarre.

And it’s impossible, because they’ve had to have hatched on Alternia, right? They’d have had to go through the Brooding Caverns like anybody else, fight their way to Conscription like anybody else. But they live like they don’t remember a minute of it. 

It takes aggressive sniffing to discern, but she notices that some of them have a yellow line stitched around their collar, slim enough to go ignored by most people, tucked under the fold of the clothing. Those trolls tend to linger to the side of the courtyard, speaking more carefully, speaking less. The few psionic Keteans almost invariably wear it. Most importantly, they all use different doors than the normal citizens. Locked doors.

Arrogant little spymaster, Sollux, dressing his agents in his own color. She bets he thought nobody would notice.

She grins as she descends into the courtyard. 

She bats her cane around indiscriminately when she reaches the bottom of the stairs, making a show of feeling along one wall with her right hand. Trolls split around her, giving her a wide birth to avoid the stinging sweep of her cane. A few shoot her piteous glances, but the majority try not to look at her at all. It’s hilarious how uncomfortable her blindness makes people, when she plays it up. It’s lovely how lazy it makes them, when they don’t think she can see their guard dropping. 

“Pardon,” she croons. “Pardon. Pardon. Beg your pardon.”

The ruse is an old one. She hasn’t used it since her FLARPing days, and even then, it was an earlier effort, back when she was still learning the mechanics of manipulation. Pretending to be cullbait always drew the kind of trolls who liked to prey on it, not expecting her to be the kind of troll who preyed on people like _them._

In a way, FLARP was her first education in justice; how to work a crowd, how to catch a criminal, how to play a judge. Nostalgia catches her unexpectedly, a sharp pang in her side, a reminder of how very far she is from the person she was then. 

The door is print-locked. She could try breaking the lock, like she did on the juggalo ship, but somehow she figures Sollux takes his security more seriously than the Mirthful Church. And it would cause unnecessary commotion, anyway. There are more effective ways of getting it done.

She leans against the wall and feigns exhaustion, dragging a hand across her forehead to wipe imaginary sweat. A line of pillars supports the terrace, behind which lies the door and Terezi’s alcove; as such, she’s hidden from full view of the courtyard. 

By and by, a troll with the yellow collar-mark approaches, giving her a wide berth. When he passes her, she darts forward, hooks an arm around his neck, and hauls him back behind her pillar. 

Tension jackknifes along his spine, but he stays quiet, perhaps estimating the gravity of the situation. She unsheathes her sword and presses the flat of the blade to the back of his neck, touching cool steel to warm skin. 

“Morning,” she murmurs cheerfully. “Do you understand what it is I’ve got against your neck?”

He nods.

“Excellent. Now, let me tell you — under normal circumstances, I’ve got a wonderfully steady hand. I could shave your head dry with this very swordstick and not remove a single cell of skin. I’m that good. So you should feel very safe! But see, I’m not very good with loud noises.” She rotates the blade so the edge is braced against the upper knobs of his spine. “They’re a real problem. So if you scream — or cry for help, or yell, — generally, make any kind of noise that might risk startling me — I can’t guarantee I will retain this _exquisitely_ fine motor control.” She wiggles the blade slightly, not enough to cut, just enough to rasp against his collar. “Do you understand?”

He nods again.

“Fantastic. So.” She angles her elbow towards the door. “Where does that pretty thing lead, then?”

The tendons of his cheek bulge as he presses his teeth together.

“You can speak, you know. That won’t startle me. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

He stares out of the corners of his eyes, trying to get a glimpse of her, straining so hard he’s likely making himself dizzy. She huffs a short, exasperated breath.

“I’m beginning to think you lied to me when you said you knew what I had against your neck. Do you not? It’s a sword, in case you were bluffing. A sharp sword. A sword with an edge so fine that I could cut a third of the way through your trachea before you felt anything at all.” She hums. “I could be there already, matter of fact.” 

He stiffens in what is obviously an involuntary reaction, and she snickers.

“Would you like me to repeat the question?”

“It’s the tunnel system,” he grits out. “You can’t get in.”

“No shit, dumbass, that’s why I’ve got you. Does your finger open that door?”

A nod.

“Well, then,” she says, removing her arm but not her sword. “Do your thing, baby.”

His hands curl into fists. He shakes his head.

She rolls her eyes. “Or I could cut off your finger,” she offers, “and use that. Your call. I know _I’d_ prefer having five digits, but maybe the ladies love amputees on this planet.”

He takes slow, halting steps to the door. She keeps pace, lowering her sword as they tread into view of the courtyard, but scraping the tip along the floor to remind him of its presence. It kicks up sparks in its tread, and she regrets damaging a perfectly nice hallway, but counts it as a casualty of necessity. 

The door beeps when he slots his finger against the pad, and slides open. He almost turns to look at her after he’s finished, but she replaces the blade on his shoulder, and his head whips around to avoid cutting open his own tendon. 

“Your compliance has been much appreciated,” she says tenderly. “If it makes you feel better, I probably wouldn’t have killed you if you hadn’t.” After a moment’s thought: “I will if you follow me, though.”

Then she darts through the door and thumbs the closing switch, sealing it. 

She inspects her blade and finds a rivulet of pale green trickling down its edge. It freezes her. She isn’t that imprecise. She’s _never_ been that imprecise.

—Did she apply too much pressure? Did he flinch at an inopportune time? Did she nick his leg, when he was walking? Did she take too much delight in the threat, did her hand waver, did she think of someone else when she had his life in her hands —

Her thoughts dissolve, reassemble, swirl apart again. She braces herself against the wall and watches blood dribble onto the floor.

 

* * *

 

Terezi killed her first troll when she was six sweeps old. She tracked the troll for three nights beforehand, used a considerable amount of resources and called in more favors than was, strictly speaking, appropriate.

She did this because the troll in question had killed one of her old FLARPing teammates, and because she had a very limited view of justice — insofar as there was nothing in the rules against killing people, particularly people not on your team. Terezi decided to enact vengeance on this one particular troll, not because they had violated any law of society, but because they had personally inconvenienced her, and made her feel sad. She had yet to learn that much of law was built on such simplicities, albeit dressed up with more technical elements. 

Her lusus spoke to her less and less as she grew older, which had at one point lead Terezi to deduce that her longer periods of communication as a wriggler had been youthful hallucinations. But before Terezi left, she reached out. It was one of the last times she ever would. 

_Kill quickly,_ she said. Her voice was more tired than it had been in sweeps past, heavy with prophecy, rough with grief. _Kill kindly._

“What do you mean?”

She hadn’t said anything. Terezi hated her lusus, a little bit, then, for all the things she could have said and didn’t. She hated her because she never said anything when Terezi asked, but said everything when Terezi was already certain of what to do. She hated her for a lot of reasons besides that, a lot of them related to having more or less taught herself how to be a person, but that was the one that came to mind with her lusus’ latest instruction.

“Fine,” she said, and strapped on her swordstick — plain steel, not the elegant weapon that she’d receive upon graduating the Academy — and left the hive.

As she was going, her mother added, _Take nothing more than you must._

Terezi disregarded this at the time. She believed it to be the addled ramblings of an aging animal, trapped in a white prison for going on six sweeps. 

Only afterward, when she was looking at the interior of a troll’s open throat and watching green viscera trail off her swordstick, did she understand. This was the way with much of her mother’s advice. It was comprehensible only after it had been ignored.

It took her seven strokes to kill. The first strike tore open their throat, but they didn’t die. They gurgled, dropping to their knees, hands scrabbling at the deck, trying to crawl away from her. She hadn’t expected them to keep going past the first cut. She had only seen killing in movies, or when watching teammates do it — and they all used riflekind, when they did it. As such, she hadn’t thought to put any strength behind the weight of her sword when she swung it for their carotid — she had assumed that, like in the movies, the blade would cut effortlessly through muscle and bone, a clean death. 

Panicking, she struck again, hitting them over the back of the neck. They collapsed, but kept wriggling forward, spasming with the damage done to their spinal cord. A hand snaked out and seized her ankle, and she screamed, hacking it off with a quick, clumsy swing. What followed was a bloody encounter, whereupon she buried her sword in whatever part of their body she could manage. Only ten minutes of messy struggling did they finally die, offering an anguished, indistinguishable gurgle for their final words — she had long since sliced out their vocal cords. 

She sat down on the dock where she had cornered them, dropping her weapon, and rested on her knees. The listless eyes of the troll she killed lingered on the sky. She was covered in green blood, and under the hot moon it crusted quickly over her skin. 

After a moment, she leaned over and vomited. Some of it got onto the dead troll’s shoes.

When she came back to her hive, it was almost sunrise, and she could feel the concern radiating from her lusus’ shell. She had dumped her stained uniforms into the trash can and spent two hours in the ablution chamber, scrubbing herself so hard she almost removed a layer of skin. 

_Terezi,_ her lusus said, once she left the ablution chamber. It was the second time, to Terezi’s memory, that her lusus said her name. The first was the night it was given to her.

She sat herself down in front of the egg and closed her eyes, took a deep, calming breath. 

“Teach me how to do it kindly,” she said. Her lusus reached into her mind, and did.

 

* * *

 

In a dark, empty hallway on Psari, Terezi takes deep, calming breaths.

She isn’t a sloppy killer. She’s good at what she does. She isn’t _wasteful._

She wipes her sword on her sleeve and sheathes it.

_What did you think I carried the sword for?_

The hallway is lit by a series of yellow LED’s along the floor. It’s a sharp inline, leading up to another door at the top of the hall — this one sealed not by finger print, but by normal analog lock. Captor doesn’t do anything by half, either, apparently.

_You’ve seen legislacerators fight before. You’ve killed your share of them._

She starts walking. Her sword bumps against her leg. There is no excuse for sloppiness, not in a legislacerator’s profession, not anywhere. There is, furthermore, no excuse for allowing emotional conflicts to interfere with one’s professionalism. The troll did everything she asked. He didn’t deserve to bleed. He didn’t deserve to suffer for Terezi’s pain.

_Not in the dark. Not blind. And not like that._

Vriska wouldn’t have cared about nicking one troll’s neck. But then, she and Vriska have always had different approaches to pain, to killing. 

_There go my plans for killing you._

She wonders if Vriska would have been successful, whatever her plans were. She was certainly always more strategic than Terezi gave her credit for, even if in different ways than Terezi herself. 

_It’s a Church ship. You think nobody ever died here? Ask around._

The door has a bolt-lock, turned by inserting a key into the hole. Through the thin gap between door and frame, she can see lights on the other side.

She slides her blade into the gap and brings it down with considerable effort, cleaving the bolt from the door and breaking the lock entirely.

The block behind the door is empty, and she sidles inside. An array of monitors are fixed to the left wall, with a broad keyboard before them. Each displays a different block, some focused on areas of the castle she’s never seen before. At least three of the blocks contain recuperacoons. She represses a shudder.

The Spymaster’s command center. She wonders how many people have access to it. She wonders if the Heiress has access to it.

There’s a door at the far corner of the chamber that locks from the outside. Voices issue from beyond it, muffled but clearly agitated. 

She steps closer and puts her ear to the wood.

“ _Ship — nothing — help —”_

Frustrated, she opens it and steps through.

It’s unreasonably heavy, but then, she suspects it’s meant to be moved only by Sollux’s psionics. Beyond it lies a long, elaborate balcony, overlooking the throne room. A row of purple curtains obscures the door from view at ground level, making a convenient alcove for eavesdropping. But likewise, it’s high enough that she can hardly smell what’s going on at ground level, either. A row of steps sneaking behind the throne allow someone to move from the door to the throne with relative ease. 

Feferi is entertaining someone obviously ill-tempered, judging by their volume, but _whom,_ it’s hard to say. Too many people are speaking once — Feferi’s courtiers, all trying to get a word in edgewise — and none are being listened to. Terezi edges forward, trying to get a better angle. The racket of voices clears, briefly, creating the opportunity for one to shout —

“Where’s Pyrope?”

Terezi’s bloodpusher _stops._

The voice lilts, syrupy, a tone anybody unused to it would assume is mocking. 

“Gone.”

“What do you mean, she’s gone?”

A rustling noise that Terezi can only assume is Feferi adjusting her robes.

“I mean she left. She’s on a ship to Alternia right now. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.”

“No, if you were sorry, you’d — look.” It’s apologetic, plying. “Just put me in contact with her. Just give me a video call, right?”

“Don’t you have her Trollian handle?”

“Somewhere between getting my ass hauled across the star system, it failed to come up,” it snaps. “I — look! I’ll get the fuck out, I’ll leave, I know I’m not your favorite hiveguest. If you get me in contact with her, I’ll never bother you again.”

Feferi is silent for a moment. Then, “I’m very sorry.”

Terezi steps out onto the balcony.

Vriska Serket stands before the throne, head high, shoulders square. She’s all indignant presumption and lawless freedom, and perhaps Terezi is hyperbolizing, but it all _feels_ true, looking at her, as plain as day and patently _there_. A miracle in a gaudy overcoat.

Her eye catches Terezi’s movement, and she turns sharply. Her breath catches.

“I’m very sorry,” Terezi tells Feferi, carelessly.

Feferi’s gaze is cool as it settles on Terezi. “Morning, Counselor,” she says, and the fish puns are gone, which is probably a terrible sign for Terezi’s health. Terezi is too angry to care.

“I didn’t know I was on a ship to Alternia,” Terezi adds, leaning onto the balcony. “But I guess I should have realized. Creeps up on you, doesn’t it?” 

“Terezi,” Vriska says.

“Hi, there, Captain. How was space?”

Vriska’s eyes skirt over Terezi quickly, gauging her temper, and must find it to be at a similar level with hers, because she smiles. It’s one of her cruel smiles, an expression that bodes poorly for anyone out of her favor. 

“Fine,” she says. 

“Your crew all right? Well-fed?”

“Course. They’re flying under me, aren’t they?”

“That’s not nearly as certain a guarantee of safety as you’d like it to be,” Terezi remarks blandly, and strolls over to the staircase. “Now, what’s a thing like you doing in a place like this?”

Vriska hesitates. Glances at the Heiress. “I dunno if you’ve heard,” she says, “but there’s this movement going on. I’ve got a pal involved, she’s this big dumbass, keeps hurling herself into danger. I’d rather not see her dead.”

“Your pal sounds like a real stand-up girl, putting her neck on the line for a movement.”

“You could say she’s got a thing for lost causes.”

Terezi opens her mouth to retort, and Feferi beats her to it.

“If you’re both quite fin-ished,” she snaps, and Terezi pauses at the bottom of the staircase.

“Sorry to waste your time,” she says, attempting to imbue as much insolence as she can into the statement. “I was just leaving.”

Feferi raises an eyebrow. Terezi gestures to the door.

“See,” she says, “my ride just got here.”

Feferi closes her mouth and sits back in her throne. She glances between Vriska and Terezi, several times, with speculative calculation, and then crosses her legs. Her expression is inscrutable. For a moment, she very much resembles a real Empress, holding court.

“Go,” she says at last, with a finality that communicates it will be the last thing she says to either of them for a long while.

Vriska seems like she wants to say something, and judging by her expression, it isn’t going to be complimentary. Terezi grabs her by the elbow and hauls her out of the throne room.

She waits until the doors have swung fully closed behind them to say anything. The _Scourge_ sits on the grasses just outside the main building, all new shine and elegant curves, cabin lights aglow. Terezi takes a moment to shoot Aradia a message ( **FOUND 4 SH1P. COM3 4T ONC3** ). Then she sends her location and shuts the wristtop off.

The sun is just peeking over the waves behind the seawall, backlighting the throne room building in magnificent pink. Terezi thinks it’s rather bright for her tastes. 

She takes a breath and lets herself cool off before looking at Vriska. She can’t bring herself to think of the Heiress, afraid of what conclusions she might draw, what resolve she might come to. 

“So,” Vriska says.

Terezi folds her hands over her cane and waits.

“I came back.”

“That you did,” she agrees.

“I dunno if I should apologize for leaving, or — or what.”

“Are you apologizing, or asking me whether you should?”

“Fuck. I don’t know. The first one, I guess? Because I just. I was thinking.” Vriska shoves her hands in her pockets and exhales. “I was up there, ready to jump system, and I thought about, uh. About you?”

Terezi’s pusher tightens, but she says nothing, half afraid that if she does, Vriska will stop.

“I was looking at the map, and I was thinking about leaving. I wanted to do it. I wanted to fly as far away as the ship would let me, keep clear of anything even remotely related to revolutions or Mindfang or legislacerators. I had a fast ship and a crew, and I probably could’ve done it. But the thing is.” She coughs. “You remember when you said you were pale for me?”

Terezi nods almost imperceptibly.

“You still, uh. That way?”

“Am I still _that way?”_

“Are you still pale, you obstinate asshole.”

Terezi steels herself, grinds the tip of her cane into the dirt for balance, and nods.

“Right.” Vriska whistles and looks at the sky. “So, uh. You also remember how I said I liked you?”

“I remember you stumbling over a collection of phrases to that effect, yes.”

Vriska sends her a flat look but lets it slide. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah. That was as much as I could say, back then. But that was before. And the thing is — you stayed.”

Terezi tilts her head, confused. 

“On the ship. You ran a trial. You _won_ the trial. And then you broke the rules.”

“Because they would have killed me if I tried to leave, Vriska, it wasn’t exactly a charitable impulse that kept me there.”

“No, don’t bullshit, you could’ve left if you really wanted to. Or, at least, you could’ve staged an escape attempt, it would’ve been way fucking easier without me slowing you down.” Her breath rasps at her throat. “And I thought — why the fuck did you do that? Sure, I helped some, but I also was a way more noticeable prison break. Took me a while, figuring that one out, that’s what took me so long. But I realized: it was because, you know. You gave a shit about me. In the conciliatory sense.”

Terezi’s bloodpusher resurrects itself, and overcompensates for its lapse by kicking into an aggressive two-step.

“So. When I was thinking, up there I figured — look.” Vriska shakes her head, as if to erase her previous stumbling attempts at confession, and spreads her hand. “I don’t know what pale feelings are like. I don’t know shit about diamond overtures, and I certainly don’t know a damned thing about how to be someone’s moirail. But I figured that when you’re like that, for someone, the thing to do is. You stay.” Her hands spread further. “So here I am.”

Terezi kisses her.

It’s nothing intense. It’s a platonic kiss, just a meeting of mouths, as divorced from flushed intent as any such gesture can be. It conveys a pale sentiment, a gentle sentiment, an emotion that’s soft and quiet and warm and all the other things Terezi has never been.

“Say it,” Terezi insists. “I want to hear you say it.”

“For fuck’s sake.”

“Do you want to be my moirail, or don’t you?”

“In case it wasn’t obvious,” Vriska says tartly, “the answer is _y—”_

Terezi kisses her again.

At some point, Aradia shows up, but in a gesture that earns her Terezi’s eternal respect, she edges around the courtyard and sneaks onto the ship without soliciting either of their attention. Vriska’s skin is rough with sweeps of weathering, and her hands don’t really know how to touch someone tenderly, and she is an absolutely terrible kisser, and Terezi delights in every detail that she discovers for the exclusivity of their knowledge. The warm feeling in her chest settles in her sternum and flickers happily, a comfortable heat. 

She knows Vriska won’t _say_ it, say the word — _pale_ or _feeling_ or _pity_ or _love_ — but she wouldn’t be Vriska if she did.

“We should go,” she says. Vriska’s thumb crosses the base of her horn, an intimate little gesture, and then she steps away.

“Ship’s ready to fly,” she says, gesturing to the _Scourge_ with an air of hesitant suggestion.

“To Alternia?”

Vriska shifts uncomfortably, but says, “If that’s where you’re going, that’s where it’s going.”

“That’s where I’m going.”

“Well, then.” Vriska offers her hand.

Terezi smiles.

** END OF INTERMISSION **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _In the desert_  
>  _You're on the backseat of my car_  
>  _In a dream we're gonna watch the stars_  
>  _In a new place_  
>  —Troll Handsome Poets, _Sky On Fire_


	12. A Dark Planet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“Scientists — human and troll alike — have long held Alternia to be one of the most inhospitable planets in the known universe, save those which literally cannot be settled without breaking some law of physics. The second planet from the sun in a system of twelve, it orbits the red giant Sol-001 at a distance which, if modeled by Earth and its own local star, would instantaneously turn our crust to molten rock. It resembles Jupiter in size, and thus exerts a gravitational pull necessitating extraordinary bone density to develop bipedal tendencies; with a highly toxic lower atmosphere near all but the poles, the troll species early on developed an immunity to gaseous poisons, and a capacity to survive on extraordinarily low oxygen quantities. The dead which plague its surface were borne as a consequence of a viral infection somewhere around 500 B.C., and are exclusively carnivorous. This makes trolls the most successful example of adaptive evolution in history, to which there is no Earth equivalent except, perhaps, the common cockroach.”_  
> 
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

**ACT 2**

The _S.S. Scourge_ cuts the sky over Alternia like a bullet through pitch. 

One of the moons swings into view over the planet’s edge, iridescent pink against charcoal; the other twirls slowly on the opposite side, its green dulled by the planet’s shadow. From the ship’s bridge, the stars seem to rotate, settling into sets of familiar constellations. The Handmaid, the Empress, the Lusus, the Imperial Drone. The birthplace of the First Alternian Empire looks, upon approach, like a planet of ashes, the fire of which died long since. 

Terezi Pyrope stands on the bridge of the _Scourge_ and watches Alternia’s moons arc over one another in their old dance. 

When she tries, she can smell it: soot and cotton candy and antifreeze. Far more prominent, though, are the smells of the cockpit, the muddy rainbow of trolls, the industrial sterility offered by a new ship. Vriska’s scent stands out, although probably only because Terezi is attuned to it. Aradia’s muted raspberry emanates from her position at the helm. A faint undercurrent of rose-pink drifts from the fuchsia finishings, the Peixes crests stamped on the dashboard and the seats, and although a white circle differentiates them from the Imperial standard, the hue remains identical.

“Prepare for landing,” says Aradia. “Targeting port.”

Feferi gave them a set of coordinates. Supposedly, they’re landing in a hangar two miles from her forces’ headquarters, to which an emissary will find and direct them. Feferi grew vague, however, when asked about the details of the operation, which was a source of concern, but not panic. Not yet.

“Steady on,” Vriska said, unnecessarily. The crew had been going _steady on_ for some time; she seemed to be saying it more to give herself something to say than to provide any kind of instruction. Her voice was a note higher than normal. 

Terezi hadn’t been on Alternia since Conscription. Nobody came back. The last time she saw her planet in person, she was watching it through the window of the _S.S. Justice_ as it flew towards the Imperial Law Academy at near-lightspeed. It had shrunk quickly in the _Justice’s_ wake, dwindling into a grey speck against an enormous swath of darkness, and then blinked out. _Good riddance,_ she had thought, and never looked over her shoulder. It was not the kind of place that inspired nostalgia.

It still isn’t. She can count on one hand the number of happy memories she has here, and all of them involve pretending to be somewhere else. Most trolls don’t even have that many. Most trolls don’t make it out. 

_Scourge_ banks and angles for the north side of the planet. The landing site seems to be somewhere in the continent of Kors. It’s the largest continent, and home to four of the cardinal cities, among which lies the Capitol. It is also, for that precise reason, a terrible place to headquarter one’s revolution. 

“There’s keeping your enemies close,” Terezi says, “and then there’s this.” 

Aradia lifts an eyebrow wordlessly.

“That’s Kors,” she adds. “It’s the most densely populated continent on the planet. They’re sitting ducks.” 

Vriska shrugs. “I grew up in Pelops,” she says. “You could go miles and not see anyone. Course, I was neighboring with a bunch of highbloods, so that was probably a survival mechanism.” 

“Pelops?”

“Big castle,” she says. “Right on the water. It was prime real estate. Had assholes hauling out from all over to try and kill me for it, would not recommend.” She cocks her head. “You lived in Kors?” 

“The Mendicant Forest.” 

“Ah.” Vriska pauses. “Don’t know where that is.”

“It’s half an hour from the Capitol, by lift. Mostly midbloods, people with forest lusii.” 

“Is that what yours was?”

“Hm?”

“A forest lusus.” 

“No,” Terezi says. The corner of her mouth twitches. “Not strictly speaking.”

“What, like a featherbeast? I heard that tealbloods were mostly featherbeasts.”

“An egg,” she says. Vriska blinks.

“You’re shitting me.”

“Technically a dragon. Unhatched, though.”

“You _are_ shitting me. Which is weird, because I don’t feel like I’ve done anything to deserve it, except make a maybe kind-of casteist comment about lusii assignment, which, like, I’m willing to get educated about it, obviously —”

“I’m not shitting you. Where did you think the dragon motif came from?” 

“I assumed you picked it because it was more badass than whatever your lusus actually was, I dunno, or like, yours was a lizard or something and you decided to exaggerate — you were raised by a fucking _egg?”_

“She communicated with me telepathically,” Terezi says, feeling impelled to defend her lusus’ honor, “when she needed to.” 

“Telepathically!”

“I’m not a telepath. Nor was she, really. It was a special circumstance necessitated by her limitations in the physical realm.”

Vriska makes a disgruntled, incredulous noise, half-laugh, half-grunt. She rubs her temples as if fighting off a confusion-borne headache. 

“Captain,” Aradia says politely, and she looks up. “Breaking atmosphere.” 

“Brace,” Vriska calls. The crew fasten themselves in, and the ship shudders briefly as it slows and ducks through the first cloud layer. Pinpricks of light blossom from the planet’s surface, spiderweb configurations around major metropolises and dilated constellations stitching over the swaths of countryside. Terezi grips the dashboard and inhales deeply, taking in old scents, old images. She wouldn’t call what she’s feeling _nostalgia,_ exactly, but perhaps its melancholic cousin.

“Targeting port,” Aradia announces. “Area identified. Proceeding with all due speed.” 

Vriska nods, waving her hand permissively, and sits back in her chair. Her eyes scan the horizon in quick strokes. Terezi watches her.

Aradia leans forward and opens the comm station. “ _Scourge_ to Landing Bay Nine-Nine-Five,” she says. “ _Scourge_ to Landing Bay Nine-Nine-Five, over.” 

Radio silence. A few trolls near the station exchange glances, which Aradia ignores, and tries again. “ _Scourge_ to landing bay,” she attempts. “ _Scourge_ to landing bay. Requesting permission to land, over.” 

Still nothing. Sighing, she closes the channel.

“They must be expecting us,” Terezi points out.

“Probably. But they might not know we’re coming in this ship. Feferi probably told them we’d be showing up in one of her vehicles.”

A cluster of trees sprouts from the ground. The details of the landscape flourish. Rivers and lakes emerge from the rock, as do roads, farms, speedlifts, towns, and the few trolls wandering around just after the break of dusk. Alternia sharpens into focus under the ship’s belly.

“Tell me we’re not actually landing in the Capitol,” Terezi orders Aradia, as the city dawns on the viewport.

“We’re not actually landing in the Capitol.”

“Now tell me you didn’t just say that because I told you to.” 

“I didn’t,” Aradia assures her. “It’s miles away. The landing site’s in the middle of nowhere, really, nobody would bother looking for us there.”

“Are we close?”

“Coming up on it,” she says, and then, pointing to the window: “There.” 

Her assessment was correct, in that she appears to be pointing at nothing but a collection of trees nested in between hills. The Capitol’s ominous, ridged silhouette sits on the horizon beyond it, and still further, a row of pale purple mountains. The ship now skims the surface of the planet at an altitude of a few hundred feet, close enough to observe the details of the terrain beneath it, close enough for Terezi to count the individual trolls on the ground below. 

“Hope you’re seeing something I’m not,” says Terezi. She grins.

“Troll Christ,” Vriska sighs. 

The ship banks and curves over the nearest hill. A clearing appears amongst the trees, a wide, unnaturally clean piece of land. It’s too small for the _Scourge_ to fit its whole berth — if it’s a landing pad, it’s meant for ships smaller than theirs.

“That can’t be it,” says Vriska.

Aradia nods. “We’re at the target location. Start descent,” she tells the trolls at the helm, who send her apprehensive looks but don’t disobey. 

“That’s not big enough.” 

“This girl can handle an encounter with a tree,” Aradia says brightly, thumping the wall. 

“Obviously but — oh, shit —”

One of the _Scourge’_ s wings splinters against the top of the treeline, and then they’re descending, flattening rows and rows of old foliage. Branches screech against the durasteel and scratch at the windows. The ship rocks with impact, and the trolls in the cockpit scrabble for something to hold onto. 

“Steady,” Vriska roars. 

They’re maybe a dozen, two dozen feet from the ground. _Scourge_ skitters into the clearing and halts with a jerky shudder, the velocity thrusting Terezi against her seatbelt. She clings to her cane with one hand and the wall with the other, gritting her teeth and waiting for her dizzy spell to pass. Gradually, the ship lowers itself to the ground, inching closer with agonizing lethargy. She can feel the landing prongs settling into the earth with a gentle _thud_ , and can tell they’re all right when Vriska exhales and unbuckles herself.

“Well done,” Aradia announces. “We’ve arrived.” She flicks a switch over her head. The landing dock descends from the bottom of the bridge, letting in a gust of warm air and the rich, jade smell of the forest.

Terezi rises. For a moment, nobody moves. Nobody wants to take the first step. The air outside tastes both foreign and familiar. Alternia’s atmosphere rakes at her lungs for the first time in sweeps.

“We don’t have all night,” she says, feigning indifference, and trots down the landing dock. Vriska, cursing quietly, bounds after her. 

Her steps land easily and spring back up with a bounce in her heel. Imperial regulations set the gravity standard higher in airspace than on Alternia, for the purpose of endurance training; the temperature in space is also colder, on balance, and so the air hangs heavy and thick over her skin. That isn’t the most distracting part. What’s distracting is the way that scents track here, blurred and muddy, smeared into one another by virtue of the heat and the higher oxygen rate. In space, scents hardly carry at all, and she had to train her nose to pick up mere scraps. Here, it feels like walking from a dark room into full sunlight, and she’s covering her nose before she can stop herself.

“Terezi?” Vriska’s hand ghosts along the small of her back, skittish, and retreats. 

“I’m fine,” she says, waving her away. “Give me a moment.” 

She focuses on the most immediate sensation: Vriska, the greying-blue-black of salt and metal, something pungent but not unpleasant. Something clean, despite how laughable it would seem. Gradually, then, she broadens her horizons. Aradia’s muted red sharpens into the shape of a troll as she steps off the ship, hair fluttering slightly in the breeze. A lemon-yellow troll climbing down behind her. Then another, paler red, brown, olive, brown, and, further still, the cool licorice-black of the ship herself. She plucks out the individual threads of cream-white stitching along the crew’s uniforms, savors the ice-white pinprick of stars against the sky. Shades return to her gradually, and then with a detail that they never had in space. She remembers what it was like the first few days off Alternia, when she could sense almost nothing, when she had come closest in her life to being genuinely blind; she remembers how easy it was to perceive things down here, with air thick enough to carry scents for miles. 

She becomes aware that Vriska’s hand is on her shoulder, and she pats it absently. “Sorry,” she says. “It was nothing.” 

Vriska’s mouth flattens, but she nods, letting the deflection slide, and removes her hand. “Megido,” she calls. “Where’s that contact Peixes promised?”

“You ask like I’d know.” 

“Just saying. If this is the place, where’s the people?”

“Might be late,” Terezi suggests.

“Well, we’re high and dry until they get here. I’m not keen on waiting around for a drone to show up.” Vriska shifts. Terezi notices the prickle of tension in the hairs on her neck, the periodic twitch of her fingers toward her guns. 

“We could contact Feferi,” Terezi suggests.

“Wouldn’t work,” Aradia says immediately. “Sollux doesn’t accept messages to Psari from Alternia, except through his own private servers. And he only keeps those in his own bases.”

“Paranoid shitfuck,” Vriska mutters. She draws one of her guns, for no apparent reason. It seems to make her feel better. 

“We’ll be fine,” Terezi says. It isn’t very convincing. She’s usually a better liar than this. It must be something about the atmosphere. 

“I know that,” Vriska snaps. She sounds equally convinced.

Something rustles in the woods to their left. Vriska tenses, although Terezi at first takes it for an animal rooting around somewhere. A pattern emerges to the sound, though, a rhythm to the snapping of twigs and crunch of leaves. Footsteps. A vague grey scent drifts from that direction, tall, troll-shaped. Terezi draws her sword and takes a step toward it. 

“Three o’clock,” Vriska warns. She points her gun in the general direction of the noise and draws the other, clicking off the safety with the flick of her thumb. 

Aradia begins unwinding a long length of rope from the coil at her hip. 

The troll breaks the nearest line of trees and lingers in the shade beyond the clearing, obscured by the undergrowth. Terezi takes a deep whiff. They’re a dark greenblood, darker than anyone she’s ever smelled, but _bright,_ a vividness usually impossible for someone with blood that color — some kind of weird variation on emerald, maybe, or a mutant ivyblood — 

They take another step forward, and their eyes catch the moonlight. Their irises glow unnaturally bright yellow. 

“Who’s there?” Aradia lifts her voice. “State your purpose.” 

The troll steps into the light of the clearing. Tall and broad-shouldered, layers of muscle are knit over her strange, angular bone structure, and her skin glitters oddly, catching the moon with a refractive shimmer, instead of the rough matte texture to be expected of skin. She wears a black combat suit, with flared sleeves embroidered scarlet at the hems. Her hair curls around her head in a thick helmet of curls, from which sprout two long, curved horns, one hooked, the other honed to a perfectly manicured point. 

“Lady Pyrope,” she says. Her voice thrums at an almost ultrasonic depth. 

Terezi inclines her head. “And et cetera,” she adds, gesturing to the crew. Vriska gives her an unimpressed look.

“Is Megido here?”

Aradia gives an abortive wave. 

After a moment: “Did the Cuttlefish send you?” 

Vriska’s nose wrinkles. “Cuttlefish. Of all callsigns —”

“Mindfang,” Terezi mumbles under her breath, and Vriska’s jaw snaps shut. 

“Yes,” Aradia blurts. “And I have documents — hold on —” She roots through her satchel and removes a manila folder, holding it out.

The woman steps forward and takes it. After flipping through it briefly, during which an interminable silence stretches among the crew, she snaps it shut and says, “Were you followed?”

Vriska scoffs. “Yeah. We were followed, and we decided to haul ass over to your super-secret all-important HQ anyway. Because, you know, we’re idiots.”

The woman’s gaze slides, unblinking, to Vriska.

“Vriska Serket,” Terezi says, unnecessarily. “Captain of the _Scourge._ Recently reformed gamblignant. I’m not sure you’ve met.”

“I know who she is.” This appears to mollify Vriska, who is surprised but nevertheless pleased. 

“Right.” Terezi rocks on her heels. “And you are?”

“Kanaya Maryam,” the woman says. She hands the folder back to Aradia. Her nails are long, sharp, and painted black. “I’m your contact.”

“Lovely!” Terezi clasps her hand. “Great to meet you. Really fantastic. Now, we’d love to get to know you better, really, but the middle of the forest seems, to me, at least, an unideal place —”

Kanaya’s lips twitch. “I agree,” she says. “We can speak more freely in private.” She scans the remainder of the crew. “Are they all coming with us?”

“Yes,” Aradia says, before either Vriska or Terezi can confer about it. “They’re all recruits. The Heiress sent them herself.” 

“Then the ship won’t be returning.” 

“No.” 

She sighs, eyes it up and down, and nods shortly. “They’ll need to take it to our hangar.”

“If you had a hangar the whole time,” Vriska says, “why did we have to —”

“Where’s that?” 

“Not now,” Kanaya says. “Later. We’ll send out a flight crew to park it safely. Security fields will need to be set up before we can pilot into our own airspace. I’m sure you understand the need for precaution.” She cuts each syllable with crystalline precision, and with a light, accented Alternian faintly reminiscent of highblood soirees — but the artificial kind, the way that people talk in sordid eighty-ninth century dramas. Terezi’s never heard anyone actually talk that way.

“So we’re just gonna leave it there?” Vriska still hasn’t put away her guns, but she has stopped pointing them at Kanaya, which is a step in the right direction, Terezi supposes.

“No one lives out here. And the drones won’t touch an abandoned ship. Your vessel will be perfectly safe until we come back for it.” 

Vriska glances at Terezi from the corner of her eye. Her thoughts are scrawled out across her face, unnervingly clear: she’s unwilling to part with her ship, and her history in doing so doesn’t do anything to ameliorate her fears. A gamblignant captain can hardly be expected to feel comfortable with a crew of strangers at her helm.

“Fine,” she says anyway. “ _Anything_ goes wrong —”

“You can expect to be reimbursed in full,” Kanaya intercedes smoothly. “I would not predict it, however. Our pilots are well-trained.” 

“That’s a Dragonyyd-class cruiser, Model A01. In case that was insufficiently clear, it’s the only one of its kind. It costs about as much as your outfit can burn through in a sweep.” 

“A bold announcement,” Kanaya says, “for someone who has not observed the operations of our outfit.” 

“Don’t need to. I’m just saying that if you break it, you pay for it, and if you pay for it, you’re gonna be paying for it for a long time.”

“Duly noted,” she says, graciously, and her scent sharpens with a mild undertone of amusement. “Are there any other precautions you would like taken?”

Vriska squints. Kanaya’s tone teeters on the precipice of sarcasm, but it’s too well-modulated to suggest anything but complete sincerity.

“No,” she says, at length. Kanaya nods. 

“Well, then,” she says, and gestures to the forest. She turns and begins walking back the way she came, without checking to see if they’re following. 

Vriska holsters her pistols but keeps a hand on them. “I don’t like this,” she decides. Kanaya is still within earshot.

“It’s a bit late to back out.” 

“It’s never too late to back out.” 

“There’s a joke in there, somewhere,” Terezi says, “and if you start walking now, I won’t voice it.” 

Vriska manages to make the act of walking itself exude long-suffering exhaustion. It’s something of a marvel.

 

* * *

 

Kanaya winds into the forest along a path that lacks any visible demarcation from the foliage, which means it’s either completely random or incredibly well-memorized. Most of the crew struggles to keep up. Vriska, with her long legs and broad strides, can step over most of the undergrowth without difficulty, and Terezi manages to hack her way through by making liberal use of her cane. The same cannot be said of some engineers, who emit a litany of curses when trekking through the undergrowth.

Minutes drag on into half an hour, into an hour full, and Kanaya does not once turn back, moving across the uneven terrain with preternatural grace. The dappled light from the treetops plays eerily across her skin. Not a drop of sweat has welled on her neck, despite sweltering heat and difficult activity. Nor has a single bloodthirsty-bugbeast tried to land on her, although Terezi has had to bat away hordes of the things.

Flicking one from her arm, Terezi leans into Vriska and murmurs, “What do you think she is?”

“Who? The green broad?”

“Mm.” 

She squints. “Dunno,” she says. “I heard tell that jades were weird types. Never met one myself, though.”

“Jade?”

“Yeah. That’s a jadeblood. You get a whiff of her eyes?” Vriska nods at Kanaya. “It’s a miracle she got around Conscription. They’re almost as rare as psionics.” 

“What, exactly, did you hear about jadebloods that made them ‘weird’?”

“Oh, nothing awful. Just that they tend to go odd in the head, after sweeps in the Brooding Caverns. This one seems fine, though, so I expect she’s never seen the caverns herself.”

Kanaya takes a left. The ground slopes upward in a gradual ascent which makes Terezi’s calfs burn and her breath come sharply. “You think that’s what all jades are like?”

“I dunno, do I? Haven’t ever met one, as I said.” The hike takes a toll on Vriska, too. She leans on the trees as she passes them and grapples for leverage. 

Kanaya turns her head slightly, a smile ghosting across her lips. “If you would like to know something about me,” she calls, “the best way to go about it seems to ask.” 

“Begging your pardon, Miss Maryam,” Terezi chirps. “Didn’t mean to gossip.”

“Your questions are fair ones.” She pauses, seems to get her bearings, and then chooses a different direction, marching diagonally uphill. “Most jadebloods — to your point, Counselor — are not like me.” 

“Intriguing. Care to elaborate?”

“It would be a very long story.” 

“Depending on how much walking we’ve got left, I, for one, could use a long story.” 

“Not that much,” Kanaya says, wry. 

“A shame. You realize, then, we’ll just have to keep gossiping about you.”

“What a pity. You will pardon me if I fail to restrain my disappointment.”

Definitely sarcasm. Kanaya’s tells begin to emerge from her austere demeanor, muted and well-buried under layers of composure. Terezi files them away. 

“Intriguing,” she repeats.

Vriska sheds her overcoat and drapes it over one arm. Underneath, she’s wearing a white shirt, instead of the black suit the Heiress provided for Terezi and the rest of the crew. Terezi wonders if that was an intentional slight, meant to mark Vriska apart from the ambassadorial party, or a stylistic choice on Vriska’s behalf. Either is equally likely. Both is likelier than either.

Kanaya stops walking at the top of the hill and waits for them to catch up. The last members of the party lag a full few minutes behind, bounded by Aradia, who trails at the end to ensure no one loses their initiative or their way. Terezi plants her cane in the dirt and catches her breath. On the other side of the hill there nestles a little valley, bounded on one side by a steep, rugged stone cliff and on the other by a wide arm of the forest, the trees of which rise high and are laid thick enough with leaves to completely conceal the woods’ innards. A few miles away, a ridge of mountains block the area from view of the Capitol. 

“Beautiful,” Vriska says. “If you tell me we’re going to have to cross that to get to your HQ, I’m going to cry.” 

Kanaya laughs, a mellifluous, even sound. “No,” she says. Without explanation, she steps forward and vanishes from view.

“What the fuck,” says Vriska.

Terezi moves into the place where Kanaya disappeared from and tentatively extends her cane. It strikes a bit of resistance midair, tension racing up the length of the rod, and then vanishes up to the hilt. 

“Oh,” she says. “Oh, that’s _interesting_.” 

“What?”

She grins. “That’s really very interesting,” she repeats, and steps through.

Kanaya reappears a few feet from her, watching with an amused smile. The valley looks much the same from within the invisibility field, except that now there sits in the center a rectangular building the color of dirty ice, with slanting walls, like a pyramid lacking its peak. A long fence winds around the property, twenty feet high and topped with snarling coils of barbed wire; a watchtower stands at the front of the structure, its floodlight roaming the terrain outside the wall with steady rhythm. Satellites spin lethargically from atop the base, intricate constructions of metal and wire, with blinking red lights illuminating their upper prongs. 

A hangar sits half a mile away, from whence a small speedlift is in the process of departing. 

Terezi turns around. Vriska’s jaw has dropped open. Her eyes scan the space where Terezi stands without seeing, without focusing, confusion fusing with frustration and alarm to knit her features in a scowl. 

“Does the field silence the base as well as hide it?” Terezi turns to Kanaya. 

She nods. “To some extent,” she says. “She cannot hear you, presently.” 

“Right.” Terezi reaches through the barrier — there’s no resistance, going out — and grabs ahold of Vriska’s arm, hauling her in. 

Vriska stumbles through with a hastily stifled intake of breath. “Good goddamn,” she says, air rushing out of her in a profane gust. “That’s it, huh?”

“That is,” Kanaya affirms. 

“Shit. You could’ve let us know about the invisibility ward.” 

“I thought it was self evident,” she says, far too innocent to be sincere, and starts off down the hill. Vriska’s lip curls, but she follows. Behind her, Terezi can hear the yelps of the crew becoming acquainted with the field themselves, and Aradia’s murmured noise of amazement. 

Kanaya approaches the front gate with the group of them in tow. The floodlight turns to illuminate her and halts, bathing them in sheer white. 

She waves. “Hello,” she yells. Even her shout is aristocratic, clear, refined. “I have brought back the envoys.” 

A panel slides away from the sheer, unbroken stone face of the wall, revealing a keypad. Kanaya taps in a code that must reach sixteen, seventeen digits in its entirety, and presses her hand to the panel. After a moment, a bright chime sounds, and a slit appears in the wall as the doors slide away.

She turns back and beckons. “Welcome,” she says, and enters.

Trolls mill around the courtyard in _droves._ There are so many — most of them young, their colors not yet broken around the pupils, but older, too, trolls at least Terezi’s age and _older_. She notices a couple trolls who’ve reached full maturity at ten, twelve feet fall, towering over the younger ones and stooping to have conversations. The youngest can’t be more than six or seven, their round cheeks and pale skin starkly at odds with the hollows under their cheeks, the thick chitin of their battle uniforms. Each wear some variation on the Heiress’ suit, but the pink crest is nowhere to be found. Instead, there are scarlet Signs stitched into breast pockets, onto jackets, worn as earrings and necklaces and bracelets, tattooed onto wrists and necks and palms. The sheer number of heresies makes Terezi’s mind race. Instinctively, she counts: _one-hundred twenty-two charges of heresy; seventy-five charges of iconoclasm; one-hundred fifty charges of High Treason, first degree._

People watch them. She feels their eyes rove over her glasses, her cane, and Vriska’s metal hand, peeping out from underneath her sleeve. The heat of being recognized lingers on her neck like hot breath. 

“There are so many,” Aradia says, admiringly.

“Our organization is not new,” Kanaya says. “To see us in its natal phases was a much less impressive sight. What we are now is not what we were.” 

“How many would you say live in the compound, in total?” Vriska shifts under the weight of attention. Her fingers brush the hidden holster at her waist. Terezi reaches for her wrist and lets their hands brush, once, without saying anything. She can feel people watching that, too. 

“A few hundred,” Kanaya says. She slows and allows them to catch up with her. “This is not our only compound. We have sister organizations in Pelops, Uropa, and South Merenn. And, of course, not all of our members live in a compound; these are usually reserved for adults, or those who seek safety from the drones.” 

“That’s still a hefty number.”

“Yes. Active members, planetwide, number somewhere in the thousands. You would have to ask one of our coordinators for the exact numbers. I’m afraid I don’t have those figures on me, at the moment.” The main entrance to the building is locked by another keypad, which Kanaya opens by pressing only her thumb to its surface. A sheet of stone lifts away from the door, and she steps through.

The interior is shocking in its quality. Marble columns arc up along the sides of the entrance hall, cream-colored and spotless, and the floor glistens with polished patterns of beige and brown tile. Lanterns dangle from the vaulted ceiling to illuminate the room with warm light, and doors split off in a litany of different directions. Several elevators are set into the walls. Trolls weave in and out of them, carrying stacks of papers, satchels, talking to each other in loud, comfortable, easy voices. It resembles Psari in its casual easiness, but it moves faster, more efficiently.

Vriska whistles. “Here I was,” she says, “thinking your bunch had shacked up in a whole in the ground.” 

“The Heiress is generous with her patronage,” Kanaya says diplomatically. “The design was her idea.”

“No shit. I mean, that marble’s gotta cost as much as a sweep’s worth of food, yeah? Is that gold?”

“I wouldn’t know.” Kanaya presses the button for an elevator. “Your crew won’t fit in one carriage; I’ll have someone take them separately.” She reaches out and taps the shoulder of a passing brownblood, who obligingly halts and pivots to face her. He springs a salute, too, which suggests Kanaya is of a higher rank than Terezi initially assumed.

“Lieutenant,” he says, and Vriska’s eyebrows leap for her hairline.

“Lieutenant,” she mouths to Terezi.

“Evening,” Kanaya says. “Would you escort the Captain’s crew to the mess? They will be joining us for breakfast.” 

“Yes’m.” 

“And find quarters for them, if you can.”

“Yes’m.” 

“Do you happen to know where the General is?”

“His office, ma’am, last I heard of it.”

“Thank you, Tynick.” 

“Yes’m.” He nods and beckons to the crew. None follow, at first, until Vriska tosses out an exasperated, “Get off with you, you heavy-nubbed grubs, I don’t pay you to gawk like wrigglers on Twelfth Perigee’s Eve.” 

With varying degrees of excitement, the crew follow Kanaya’s officer off to a different elevator, and the one Kanaya called opens behind them. 

“We were not expecting so many of you,” Kanaya explains. “My apologies for our inadequate preparations.”

Terezi shrugs. “I don’t know how much the Heiress told you about us, before we came, but we’re not what I’d imagine for an envoy party, either.” She offers a toothy smile. 

“I’m glad you understand. She did tell us you were coming, Lady Pyrope, and your — Captain Serket.” 

“My Captain Serket,” Terezi repeats gleefully, and Vriska groans. “Yes, excellent. I am glad she gave you an appropriate overview of the situation.”

“Pardon the slip of the tongue, Counselor. The Heiress can conduct herself with indecent familiarity.” 

“How did she describe us?” 

Aradia, sandwiched in the corner of the elevator, coughs and averts her eyes. Vriska glares at her. “Perhaps not a conversation for the moment,” she suggests.

Kanaya picks up the excuse with palpable relief. “I agree,” she says. “Another time, if you will. You must be tired. We can offer you the ambassadors’ quarters. They should, if I may say so, serve you perfectly well.” In the artificial light of the elevator, her skin seems almost normal, except for the odd reflective gleam, as refractive as the marble behind her. 

“What time is it here?” 

“Planetside, it’s around four o’clock. Sunrise will be in three hours; breakfast will come at five. A complete schedule of nightly activity will be posted in your respiteblock.” The elevator comes to a halt on the fourth floor, and opens onto a long hallway lined with black doors. Kanaya steps out and holds the door for them. “I would encourage you to join us, but if not, I can have nourishment sent to your block personally.” 

“That’s real good of you, Maryam,” Vriska says, sounding grateful. Terezi remembers, distantly, that Vriska hardly slept on the way from Psari. Between manning the helm and pacing, she isn’t certain Vriska had touched a drop of sopor since leaving the Heiress’ planet.

Kanaya inclines her head to accept the compliment. “You will want to meet with the General,” she says. “Unfortunately, his schedule is unlikely to be clear before sunrise. I have sent word of your arrival, but nevertheless, he will be occupied until breakfast, after which I doubt either of you will desire to exert yourselves.” 

“Exert,” Terezi repeats. “Odd choice of words, Lieutenant.” 

“It would not be if you knew him.”

“Who’s the General?” Vriska sticks her hands in her pockets and inspects the doors as they pass them. Some of them have names embossed in burnished brass. Others have titles: _PELOPSI AMBASSADOR; UROPAN AMBASSADOR; SOUTH MERENNIAN AMBASSADOR; NORTH MERENNIAN AMBASSADOR —_ and nondescript ones, too, like _CHIEF COORDINATOR_ and _MASTER OF ARMS._ The cost to build this place must have been enormous. Even Feferi can’t have that much money.

Surprise flits across Kanaya’s face before she schools it. “A technical rank,” she says, by way of explanation. “You likely know him. At least, I would hope the Heiress informed you of his existence.” 

“Haven’t heard a name,” Vriska says.

“Karkat Vantas.” Kanaya reaches the end of the hallway and stops in front of a set of double doors. “The descendant of the Signless-Sufferer.” 

“Ah.”

“Here we are.” She gestures to the double-doors. “These should serve; there are three respiteblocks, each with their own ablutionblock and nutrientblock. I do not anticipate there being an issue of comfort.”

“I’ve slept under a boiler before,” Vriska says, absently. “It’s all the same to me.” 

“She means thank you,” Terezi says. Kanaya smiles with thin lips, and nods to both of them.

“Will I expect you at breakfast?”

“Probably,” Terezi says, despite Vriska’s whine of complaint. “We’d like to meet General Vantas.” 

“I will inform him of your intention.” 

“ _Grazi_ ,” Terezi chirps. Kanaya offers a parting wave, and heads off in the direction of the elevators. 

Aradia waits for the elevator doors to close before saying, “So.” 

“Inside,” Terezi murmurs, and pushes open the door.

The quarters are elegant and spacious. The far wall is one broad window, with heavy curtains to block the sun in the daytime, and a few couches are organized around a television built into the left-hand wall. Immediately to Terezi’s left there is a closed door, which she assumes leads into one of the respiteblocks, and to her right there are another set, presumably the others. Small gold decorations and pretty, pointless ironwork provide clear evidence of Feferi’s patronage.

“So,” Aradia says. She sits down.

“So.” Vriska flops over on the couch, her hair spilling over the velvet, and Terezi perches on the back of the couch over her. “Not dead. Call that a good night’s work, myself.” 

“Night’s not over yet,” Terezi points out. Vriska swats her.

“Here I am, trying to develop a healthy sense of optimism —”

“Is it still ‘optimism’ if it’s not based in reality? Or do they call that ‘delusional’?”

“You’d know, wouldn’t you? You tell me.”

“Counselor and Captain,” Aradia begs. Terezi turns to look at her. Vriska does the same. Terezi’s cheeks feel warm. She feels distinctly and unreasonably like a cadet being caught paleflirting in a broom closet, and it makes her stomach twist.

“Megido,” Vriska replies, utterly shameless.

Aradia exhales, one long, troubled breath. “She’s got a ghost,” she says. “The Lieutenant. Maryam.” 

Vriska sits up, resting on one elbow. “What now?” 

“I don’t know how else to say it.” She spreads her hands helplessly. “Some trolls carry them. Most do. Some more than others. You both — and I do, too. But she’s got her lusus.” 

“Lusii have ghosts?” Vriska sits up fully, tension running down her spine like she’s been electrified. Terezi moves closer out of instinct.

“Not all of them. If you’re concerned about . . . you don’t have one,” Aradia says, carefully. “But — it has to do with a soul’s purpose, I think. If it’s got unfinished business, or if it was killed without getting what it wanted, it’ll linger. That’s not the odd thing. I’ve met people who’ve killed their — that’s not the odd thing.” 

“Lususcide isn’t uncommon,” Terezi hedges, lying, because it is, really, but Vriska doesn’t need to hear that at the moment.

“Her lusus is a Mother Grub,” Aradia says. “And she’s got other ghosts, too. They’re all . . . weird. Watery. Some of them just up and _vanish._ I couldn’t talk to them while she was around, it would’ve raised too much attention, but —”

“Do you think it had to do with her . . . ?” Vriska indicates herself, vaguely. “That whole thing?” 

“You mean her skin?”

“Yeah. And the other shit. I mean, I’ve seen trolls of all sorts, but she doesn’t look all that much like a _troll,_ even.”

“I don’t know.” Aradia nibbles her lip. “I just don’t know what it means.” 

“We can ask Vantas.” Terezi stretches. “She doesn’t seem hostile.”

“No. Not hostile.” Aradia is clearly unconvinced. Terezi stands up.

“We will ask,” she insists. “It’s probably a mutation, or something. She said that they got a lot of mutants, anyway.”

Vriska snorts. “What kind of mutation? The ‘bitchin’ tan’ gene?”

A smile twists the edge of Aradia’s mouth, seemingly involuntary. “Thank you,” she says. “I wouldn’t worry you, but —”

“Nah.” Vriska stands and stretches. Her fingers brush the ceiling. She’s got at least six inches on Terezi, which Terezi always seems to forget; Vriska’s height puts her above anyone of her own age bracket here, given her blood color, and presumably she’s not done growing. “You tell us if anyone gives you the spooks. If anyone’s got exoskeletons in their closet, I’d like to know about ‘em.” 

“Ditto.”

“Thanks,” says Aradia. “In that case. I think I’ll rest, with your leave.”

“Sure.” Vriska waves her hand permissively. “Check on the crew, would you? Make sure they haven’t all died horribly.” 

“Of course. See you at breakfast, Captain, Counselor.”

Terezi makes a vaguely affirming noise and Aradia, choosing one of the doors off the nutritionblock, disappears.

Vriska tosses her overcoat on the couch and massages her neck. “Well,” she says. “I should probably, too.” 

“Right.” Terezi angles her head towards the door to the right of the entrance. “That’s probably another respiteblock.”

“Mm. Yeah, most like.”

They studiously avoid looking at each other for a few seconds.

Ideally — and isn’t that a whopper of a word, isn’t any supposition including the word ‘ideal’ just a loaded gun of a hypothetical — were they in different circumstances, and had their courtship followed a more traditional path — traditional being a word for _normal,_ although troll romance itself generally lacks a conception of ‘normal,’ and even if it had one, Terezi’s chances of ever fitting it would be subzero — they would, as moirails, sleep together. Of course, legislacerators’ moirails didn’t often get to do that, as the legislacerator didn’t often have face-to-face contact with their moirail at all. Terezi thinks that she might’ve bought a hive, once, on some nice luxury planet in the Squamiger System, but it wasn’t for sharing so much as it was for the satisfaction of owning a piece of land, and to mollify the C-IRS. At any rate, she’d never given thought to shifting living arrangements for a quadrant. She’d never had a quadrantmate that necessitated thinking about it.

“Uh,” says Vriska, voicing more or less the same sentiment, in fewer words.

Terezi squares her shoulders. “Do you want to,” she offers, and then points with her cane to the door.

“Yeah. I mean, like, for today, or . . . ?”

“The offer was more general.” 

“Won’t you mind?”

“I’ve never slept under a boiler,” Terezi says, “but I should think it obvious that I don’t object to sharing.” 

“Guess so. Wouldn’t be the first time we have, either.” 

“No. It wouldn’t be.” 

“More premeditated, though,” Vriska notes, and Terezi agrees. 

They wait for each other to speak. Neither do.

“This,” Terezi announces, “is silly. We are grown trolls.”

“Right.” 

“I am tired. I am going to the cupe. You are welcome there, if you are so inclined.” 

“Great,” says Vriska, fiercely, “yeah,” and, with all the wherewithal of a troll striding into battle, follows Terezi into the respiteblock.

The door swings shut with a muted click behind them, and locks from a fingerprint keypad beside the doorknob. The room is spacious, if not necessarily luxurious: a balcony opens up at the far side, with darkly tinted windows and another key-print lock, and a fireplace is settled into one of the granite walls. An ovular recuperacoon sits in the center of the floor, glossy silver, and with a sopor control panel on its side. On the other side of the room there is a stool absolutely covered in pillows and blankets in what can only be understood as the platonic ideal of piles. Terezi’s cheeks burn.

“They probably put that in every room,” Vriska says. “I mean, kids around here have to have diamonds.” 

Terezi does not comment. She rests her cane against the nightstand and tosses off her glasses, rubbing her eyes. With a boneless exhaustion, she flops over on the pile.

Vriska makes a strangled noise in her throat. Terezi blinks and wriggles around to get comfortable. 

“I’m not going to sleep before breakfast,” she tells her. “And this is a really nice pile.”

“Is that an invitation?”

“Well, I’m not going to be the sad sack hanging out on the pile by herself.” 

“So — yes.”

“Vriska Serket,” Terezi says tiredly, “you don’t have a romantic bone in your body.”

“I can be romantic!”

“‘Is that an invitation?’ she says, to the troll prostrating herself on the pile like a pale prostitute.” 

“You look like you’re trying to model for _Playtroll,”_ Vriska informs her, but begins unbuckling her holsters anyway. Terezi falls silent. There is something intimate about watching her disarm herself, discard her weapons, peel off a layer of the armor. Her profile in candid is not elegant, nor, strictly speaking, beautiful, but in her focus there is a certain kind of grace, a kind of businesslike order that sets something skittering on the back of Terezi’s ribs. 

“You seem to think that’s an insult,” she says. Her tongue is leaden. The pile dulls her wit somewhat; she feels drowsy. 

“I didn’t think you were the kind to take that as a compliment.” 

“Extenuating circumstances.” Terezi stretches her arms over her head and hears the ligaments in her back pop. “Are you going to stand there all night?”

“You’re so demanding. Calm down.” 

“When have you ever known me to be a patient person? Come on.” Terezi twists, rests her chin in one palm, and coos, “Come to the pile, darling.”

Vriska barks out a laugh, dropping one of her holsters in the process of setting it on the cupeside table. “Is that your best Troll Marilyn?”

“I thought it was rather good, yes.”

“It sounded like you had something stuck in your throat.”

“It was a sultry whisper, thank you very much!”

“About as sultry as a pile of tubers,” Vriska mutters, but she at last gets her final holster off and flops over on the pile.

Her body weight lands next to Terezi and scatters a few of the pillows. Her flesh arm is pressed along Terezi’s, and her metal arm she uses to brace herself and wiggle into a better position. Their sides are sandwiched against one another, from shoulder to ankle, and Terezi can feel her heat radiating through the thin blouse. She peels off a blanket and drapes it over the both of them.

“Is this the part where I confess to my abiding, bloodpusher-eating guilt and wrigglerhood trauma?”

She swats Vriska. “This is the part where you let your poor moirail rest.”

“First it was ‘come lie down,’ now it’s ‘leave me alone.’ It’s a real time of it, being your diamond.” 

“Play it by auricular,” Terezi says, mouth stumbling over the words. It’s very warm. “Hard to get wrong, even for you.”

“Fine.” Vriska shifts to sit up and wriggles under Terezi, so Terezi’s head rests on her thigh and she has free access to Terezi’s head. Terezi’s bloodpusher spikes, but she keeps her breathing even and her eyes closed. 

“Tell me to fuck off if I should,” Vriska tells her, and then, tentatively, rests her flesh hand on one of Terezi’s horns.

If it was intended to calm her down, it has the opposite effect. The pressure sweeps along her nervous system like someone just threw the switch on her breaker twice in rapid succession, and she can’t keep her shoulders from tensing. 

“Sorry,” Vriska says hastily, removing her hand.

“No, it’s fine.”

“Should’ve given some warning —”

“It was involuntary, I’m not used to —”

“I should’ve figured you wouldn’t have been used to — my bad, Counselor, really my bad —”

“Put that prong back where it was,” Terezi says, “so help me.”

There’s a brief, short exhale, a faint twist of relief to Vriska’s scent, and her prong returns, tentative, but expected, and less shocking. The pressure reappears, but she braces herself for it, and it feels nicer, more manageable. 

Her thumb moves along the cone’s tip, and then traces a path down to the base, back up. Then she move to the other, repeats the procedure, luxuriantly slow.

“To my knowledge,” Terezi murmurs, “you have two functional prongs.” 

“Yeah, and one’s made of durasteel. If I try papping you with it, I’ll give you brain damage.” 

“Then pap gently,” Terezi says airily, tipping her head back further. “Problem solved.”

“I’m serious. I haven’t taken lefty for a test drive on any of the finer points of motor control. You’re not an ideal lab rodent.”

“Would you be careful?” 

“Of course!”

“Then try it.”

Vriska sucks in a breath through her teeth, but gingerly brings her other hand around to rest on the side of Terezi’s skull. The metal is warmer than Terezi expected. Not body temperature, certainly, but not entirely out of range for a troll’s flesh; more or less like Feferi’s skin, come to think of it. 

Gradually, Vriska inches her fingers around and starts pressing on Terezi’s left horn. Her attempts are more clumsy than with her other hand, but they’re not painful by any stretch of the imagination. It’s like being touched by a highblood wearing gloves. When the pressure grows too much, Terezi subtly shifts away, and Vriska immediately lightens her touch. Eventually, they fall into a rhythm of pressure and stroking, and Terezi’s pan dissolves pleasurably.

Time passes. Or it doesn’t. She isn’t actually sure. Most of her pale encounters before were of the mild variety, and she certainly never let any of them near her horns — the Academy was no place for trust, generally, and before that she’d hardly known what moirallegiance was supposed to be, let alone its finer points. As such, the experience catches her entirely unawares: the way the world shifts and fades away, swimming, and the vague, trance-like state into which she slides, not like sleep, exactly, but also several stages removed from anything resembling consciousness. 

Noise itches at her auriculars, but it comes distantly, as if through water. With great resignation, she lets her pan float back into the shallows.

“Mmph,” she says, petulantly.

“Hi, there, Sleeping Ugly.” Vriska’s face swims into clarity. She’s grinning. 

“Hello.” Terezi blinks. “Hi.” 

“You like that?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“You’ve been catatonic. Am I good or am I good?”

“I haven’t a clue what you mean,” Terezi says. She reaches up and flicks Vriska on the nose. “I fell asleep to avoid that atrociously awful hornrub you were attempting.”

“Uh huh. I guess I’ll just spare you the trouble of enduring it, next time.” 

“For the sake of your conscience, if nothing else. I mean, they train you in torture resistance at the Academy, but a troll can only bear so much.”

“Please accept my sincerest apologies.”

“I don’t know. This kind of injury is not easily forgiven.” Terezi shifts, and Vriska’s hands fall away. “I’ll have to talk it over with my moirail.”

“Wonder what she’ll say.” 

“Impossible to tell,” Terezi announces. “She’s a brick wall. Unreadable. A closed databook.”

“Sounds like a real hardass.”

“Oh, no,” Terezi says, concerned, “that would imply some kind of competency.” Vriska huffs a laugh, and jabs her in the stomach, to which Terezi replies by elbowing her in the ribs and initiating a scuffle that topples over the whole pile.

She flops back on the floor and sprawls out, catching her breath. “All right,” she says. “I assume you didn’t just stop to tease me.” 

“Nah.” Vriska sits up, rubbing at the back of her neck. Her fingers trace the seam between metal and flesh with neurotic precision. “I was gonna say that breakfast starts in a few, if you wanted to get down there and scope out the heads of hive.” 

Terezi waits for a moment. She’s not tired, exactly, but the thought of leaving the respiteblock seems deeply unappealing. She doesn’t voice this sentiment. It would give Vriska far too much satisfaction.

“Probably,” she says, and doesn’t move.

“You wanted to get a sniff of the Vantas kid,” Vriska points out.

“True,” Terezi concedes, and rolls to her feet. “I call the ablutionblock.” 

“S’yours.” Vriska leans on the recuperacoon to stand up. She leans against the wall and starts slinging on her holsters, one by one.

“Do you need _all_ your guns?”

“Do you need your swordstick?” Vriska challenges, stretching over her shoulder to buckle the first harness. “I didn’t get this far by wandering around strange places unarmed.”

“And have you ever had occasion to use all —” Terezi counts, quickly — “ _seven_ firearms simultaneously?”

“No, but they’ve all had their day.” She slaps the largest, a behemoth the length of Terezi’s forearm that hangs from her side. “This one here’s taken out half an Imperial squadron by her lonesome.” 

“I’m sure.”

“I’m not lying. There’s a grave stuffed full of ruffiannihilators somewhere, all carrying my lead.” Vriska beams with macabre glee. 

“Impressive,” Terezi concedes. Vriska picks up the second and twists it around her flesh shoulder. In order to buckle it, however, she has to reach her metal arm around her back, which the limb doesn’t seem equipped for. The joint rolls and pulls to a stop just shy of where she needs it to be, and she mutters a curse, straining against the limitation.

“Here,” Terezi says, before she can check the impulse, and steps forward. She takes the fastener of the harness in one hand and slides it into the other end with a quiet _snap,_ tugging the straps, and then straightens out the twists in the leather. It’s quality stuff, dark and smelling faintly of vanilla.

“Thanks,” Vriska says, quiet. Her scent is miasmic.

“No problem.” Terezi lets her palm rest over the space between Vriska’s shoulder blades. They stand like that, for a moment. 

Vriska’s blood thrums under her fingers, fast and cool and close.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she says, and it feels like a shallow echo of what she means, but it’s the closest she can bring herself to explaining to the reality of it, which is a large, dark, unsavory feeling pooling in her gut that sings to see her hand in the soft, vulnerable place between Vriska’s bone plates, and something she doubts she would ever voice, even if she had the words to. 

“Yeah.” Vriska shifts. Terezi can’t smell her expression clearly, but it sounds a bit hoarse. “I meant what I said, Counselor. About staying.”

Terezi nods, and then, remembering that Vriska can’t actually see her, says, “Yes.”

“I’m not.” 

A pause. No apparent ending to the sentence; it drifts off into nothing, until, too late for the words to flow fluidly, Vriska continues, “I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

“That’s not true.” 

“Yeah, well — it’s not technically true, but when I lie, I don’t do it about things like this. And even that’s not always saying things I don’t _mean_.”

“All right,” Terezi says, and waits.

“Point being,” says Vriska, “I meant it. And I don’t think I’ll change my mind about it. My mind’s a hard one to change.”

“I’ve noticed.” 

“You remember.” She tilts her head, slightly, but does nothing to move Terezi’s hand. Terezi grows fervently glad that neither of them can observe each other’s faces. “Word before blood.”

“Word before blood,” Terezi agrees. Then, realizing that now would be an opportune moment to offer a similar sentiment: “And — for me, I —”

“You don’t have to say it back,” Vriska says hurriedly. “Not just because I did. That’s, uh. Like, in the cellblock, like you said. I didn’t say it because I wanted to hear something _back_.”

“Like in the cellblock,” Terezi says, relieved. “Right.”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” 

“Good.”

She removes her hand, steps away, and tries to quash the feeling that there remains something unsaid between them. “Let’s go to breakfast,” she says. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _So you feel entitled to a sense of control_  
>  _And make decisions that you think are your own_  
>  _You are a stranger here, why have you come?_  
>  _Why have you come?_  
>  —Troll Mikky Ekko, _Who Are You, Really?_


	13. Scourge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“Neophyte Redglare was perhaps the most famous member of her sect in history, despite never having achieved the full rank of legislacerator. Her claim to notoriety rests on her final charge, one Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, the pursuit of whom laid waste to dozens of Redglare’s peers; Redglare’s success in this area, scholars of the subject have concluded, rested on years of research, training, and single-minded dedication, as well as ample use of her incredibly rare lusus. Yet the triumph would be short-lived. Legal records of Mindfang’s trial have been long lost, leaving no chronicle of the exact events, save for the woman’s own journals. All the same, the journals concur with the scant evidence available: Neophyte Redglare walked into that courtblock as the most venerated legal mind of her era, having accomplished the most difficult arrest of the century, a potential Magistragedy in the making — and never walked out.”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

The dining block is crammed to the fangs. Trolls bunch onto narrow tables shoulder to shoulder, plates wedged up against one another, jostling and rustling and making conversation. The block consumes half a floor by itself. Its vaulted ceiling reaches high enough to catch murmurs from one side of the room and lob them across to the other, a ventriloquistic effect that — although she would not admit it for the Empire — unnerves Terezi. 

Aradia sits at a table across the block with the crew, who seem to have settled into things nicely. They wear new uniforms, identical to the soldiers around them, although Aradia herself has eschewed it. Red Signs brand their backs. When Aradia catches sight of Terezi and Vriska, she stands up and waves, which they return. Her smile is sufficiently genuine that Terezi surmises the crew are all right, and unharmed, if unsettled.

Kanaya sits by herself at a table in the corner, making quick work of her plate of grubloaf and chopped tubers. Terezi taps Vriska on the elbow and tugs her over. 

“Lieutenant,” she sings. “Thank you for the excellent tour! We found it very enlightening.” 

“You’re very welcome.” They take seats across from her. A serving troll comes by and settles plates identical to Kanaya’s before them. Grubloaf and chopped tubers, painted in muted shades of their natural colors, cooked to lukewarm perfection. Terezi spares a brief, longing thought for the delicacies stocked in Feferi’s guesthive.

“You said Vantas was coming,” Vriska prompts. She surveys the hall. “Your word still good on that?”

“He will be attending breakfast. However, he is unlikely to be on time. Prior to this, he had a meeting with several officials from North and South Merennian branches. They are a long-winded bunch.” 

“Mm.” Vriska stretches, tipping her head back. Her hair is still messy from the pile. Terezi admires her handiwork. 

Kanaya’s eye lingers on the smooth expanse of Vriska’s bared throat. Hers a very interested eye indeed. Terezi catches it and gives her a wicked grin. _Yes,_ she thinks, _I have your number. I have all of your numbers._

A commotion breaks out near the doorway. A knot of trolls wrestles through the door, arguing fervently, several walking backwards to continue bickering with someone behind them. The hall falls quiet to observe it. 

Kanaya stands hastily. “Rise for the General,” she cries, and all do, except, of course, for Vriska, who crosses her legs and arches an obstinate eyebrow. 

The General emerges from his crowd of entourage, and Terezi takes a deep, critical sniff.

He’s _short_. Short and broad, with an enormous quantity of hair sprouting from his head, horns that barely break the surface of his curls, and a weathered cargo jacket rolled up to the elbows; his boots give him an extra two inches, but he still has to look up when he’s talking to someone. His skin has just barely started to darken with maturity, only a few shades under most of the kids in his ranks. Two irises of candy-bright scarlet ring his pupils _._

He gets up on one of the tables and beats on one of the glasses with a plastic spoon. “Hey, assholes,” he yells, voice carrying easily over the block.

Terezi blinks.

“That’s Karkat Vantas,” says Vriska, her disgruntlement evident.

“Yes.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“No. Why would I be?”

“He’s —” She blinks, hard, as if the troll will vanish and be replaced with someone more suited to her expectation while her eyes are closed. “I dunno. That’s the messiah.”

“I’m not sure he enjoys that term.” 

“The kid of the messiah, then, that’s — that’s him?”

“What were you expecting?” Kanaya frowns.

“I don’t know. Someone tall enough to reach the top shelf, I guess.” Vriska guffaws and spears a chunk of cooked tuber with her fork. “Did the Signless fill a bucket with a gnome?” 

“Vriska,” Terezi says. 

“What?” 

“I’m trying to listen,” she complains, and Vriska, rolling her eyes, stuffs the tuber in her mouth.

Karkat speaks at a volume that belies the size of his lungs. Across the cafeteria, trolls have set down their breakfasts, watching him with wide eyes and complacent, eager expressions. None seem to object to his tone, or if they do, they’re so enamored with what he has to say that they can’t bring themselves to look displeased. A few of the younger trolls start to clap when he gets up on the table, although the glacial stare he gives them freezes their prongs mid-strike. 

“Listen up,” he shouts. “I don’t like talking to you shits any more than you like listening to me, so we’re going to make this quick! In case that’s not clear, that means shut the fuck up!” He whips his head around and glares at a group of trolls who had failed to close their gaping sound-holes with sufficient expediency. “Good? Are we good? Am I speaking the Empress’ Alternian? Great. Now if you’d just keep your miserable ends in your seats for a few goddamn minutes — _don’t_ start clapping, you slime-panned wastes of good oxygen, I haven’t fucking said anything yet.”

Vriska lowers her fork, a broad grin stretching across her face. 

“Excellent.” He claps. “Break of dusk tomorrow night we’re heading out oceanside to keep the beastie from murdering us all. Volunteers?”

About a dozen hands go up.

“Great. You all, Landing Bay 7, five hundred hours. If you’re late, it’s your lusus I’m feeding it.” He pauses, squints at the crowd, as if to ensure that his message is taken with sufficient credit, and then clambers down from the table. “There. I’m done.” 

Clapping erupts from the hall, as well as a few jubilant hoots, cheers, and whistles. Some trolls get to their feet or stand on their stools, pumping their fists and calling his name with utterly sincere delight.

“No! No! _No!_ Stop that! Stop it!” He scowls, batting away the brave few who try to touch him. “I’m not a trick pony! — Touch me again, Tongva, I dare you, I’ll fucking _end_ you — stop wagging your fat prongs, you juvenile baabeasts!”

Vriska is beaming. “Oh my God,” she breathes. “I can’t believe this. This can’t be real.” 

Kanaya covers her mouth with a hand. “He disposition is an acquired taste,” she hedges. “He is, however, talented in the ways that matter.”

“What’s his specibus? Shoutkind?” 

“His followers take it in good spirits,” she says tactfully.

Terezi tilts her head. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why don’t they object?” She gestures to him. “I mean, it’s a more Imperial style of motivation than I thought would be taken kindly here.” 

“It’s not Imperial,” Kanaya says. “Most missions are organized on a volunteer basis. And he is capable of moderating himself, when needs must.”

“Is he really?” Terezi angles a look over her glasses.

“No,” Kanaya concedes, almost immediately. “No, not very well.” 

“Right,” Vriska says, with no small degree of satisfaction. “I, for one, am _very_ much looking forward to meeting the fucker. Call him over, Maryam.” 

Kanaya arches an eyebrow, but she waves Karkat over. He wrestles through the crowd with an unnecessary degree of stomping and grumbling, pausing once or twice to reply to someone’s more overt exultation. Terezi watches him struggle through and tries to repress a smile. _The second coming of the Signless-Sufferer_ , she thinks, and then: _Well, nothing could’ve really lived up to expectation, anyway._

Karkat tosses himself into a stool opposite Vriska. “Well,” he says. “That went about as horribly as could’ve been expected. I’ll want you on point, by the way, Kanaya, if you’re not doing —” He pauses, getting, for what must be the first time, a good look at Vriska and Terezi. 

He opens his mouth. Takes another look at Terezi, closes it.

“Lieutenant,” he says. “Got a small question. Tiny question. ”

“Yes?”

“What the fuck?”

“These are the envoys from the Heiress,” Kanaya says quickly. “They came in earlier tonight. You remember? We discussed their arrival yesterday. They have documentation, if you’re interested, and a few notes from Sollux —” 

“Oh, yeah. I remember that. Must have slipped my mind,” he says, with an unusual serenity, “that the envoys were going to be — I don’t know — _high-profile wanted trolls_.”

“You _are_ a high-profile wanted troll,” Kanaya points out. Exasperation warms her words.

“Yeah, which is why I’m not keen on having any more living down the hall!”

Terezi decides that this is an optimal moment for some diplomatic soothing of ruffled scales. “Terezi Pyrope, Advocata,” she says smoothly, extending her hand. “Legislacerator, First Class.”

“I know who you are.” He folds his arms. She puts her hand down after it becomes apparent that his refusal to touch it is deliberate. “You’re the jumped-up lawbug who runs those trials the Bar ran on TV. Kanaya, when did they stop running those on TV?”

“Around the time she defected, General,” Kanaya says dryly, and makes a small, emphatic cut in her tuber. 

“Would’ve been, yeah. I never watched them, myself. Was it as shitty as the other hoofbeast-leavings that ran on the Imperial Network? Because I remember a couple of privates bitching about it.”

“She’s right fucking there,” Vriska says irascibly. “If you’re going to talk shit about someone in front of their face, have the globes to look at them once in a while.” 

“And what the fuck is _this?”_ Karkat gestures at Vriska wildly. “What fresh, inventive, original brand of bullshit has the universe deigned to shovel into my lap? See, I’m holding out in the hopes that you’re gonna tell me, Kanaya, that that’s _not_ Serket, and that she’s _not_ sitting at my table while her rank ass dossier brings bounty hunters running, and that our generous patron did _not_ elect to drop both her and the Bar’s latest excommunicate on my doorstep like we’re running a correctional facility for the criminally fucking insane and I am the benevolent reformist looking to take on a new fucking pet project. I’d really like that to be true, Kanaya, are you about to make my fucking night?”

“No,” she says, and takes a delicate bite of tuber. He seems undeterred by her concision, and in fact does not seem to care one whit about her reply. For all intents and purposes, he could be talking to a brick wall, and Terezi suspects he would continue with equal fervor.

“Great. Just as I thought. Cold will be the day in the Handmaid’s asscrack when I get a fucking break.”

“Indubitably,” Kanaya agrees, sawing off a piece of beef. 

Vriska appears to be wrestling with herself, quite valiantly, to hold her tongue. Terezi intervenes before Vriska can lose the fight and spark with Karkat what, according to what she knows of both people, will culminate in a small riot.

“General,” she says, stressing the honorific with sweet faux sincerity. “I extend my sincere apologies for both my own actions and that of my compatriot. I’m not sure how much you know of our recent activities, but —”

“I know you defected,” he says, rubbing his forehead. “You can’t take a walk in the Capitol without running into one of your wanted posters. I just figured you’d have more sense than to come here.” 

“No,” Terezi says pleasantly. “No, I’m afraid we don’t have an ounce of sense between us. However, I imagine that will make us exemplary revolutionaries.” 

Vriska chuckles. Karkat stops, shoots a withering look at her from underneath his hand, and Kanaya puts down her utensils with the long-suffering sigh of a woman well-used to mediating conflict. 

“You did antagonize them,” she tells him.

“Whose side are you on, anyway?”

“Whichever side is least likely to aggravate our sponsor,” Kanaya says — she watches Terezi, even while clearly speaking to Karkat, the effect of which surely communicates her displeasure to Karkat but also deeply unsettles Terezi — “and your framing of such as a matter upon which you are justified in disagreeing suggests to me that you do not realize how critical it is to our continued existence that it not be.”

It cuts him off completely. Terezi blinks. 

Karkat glares at the table. Kanaya continues to gaze at Terezi, awaiting a response. When none comes, she nods, shortly, as if having just finished a perfunctory task, and continues eating.

“On that note,” Vriska says, testing the waters, “not that I, uh, want to get in the middle of . . . _this,_ the Counselor and I were gonna discuss the terms of whatever the hell we’re doing here. Which is, we’d been hoping, something you were briefed on, because Peixes sure as fuck didn’t give us much.”

“You’re an envoy, aren’t you? Don’t envoys just, like, stand around and send reports?”

“If she meant envoy, she would’ve said envoy.” Vriska’s nose lifts fractionally. Terezi knows this to be the warning sign that it is. 

“Did she not tell you what you’d be doing before you got shipped out here?”

“People of importance typically have more important things to do than stand around and give instructions,” Vriska says coolly, and Karkat’s knuckles whiten around his fork.

“Okay. Who the fuck do you think you —”

“Karkat,” Kanaya says. He snaps his jaw shut, rolls his eyes with almost violent aggravation, and stuffs some food into his mouth. Kanaya sends Terezi an entreating look, which begs, _I’ll muzzle mine, you muzzle yours._

“Perhaps introductions are in order,” she says, putting a hand on Vriska’s arm. “This is Vriska Serket, Captain of the _Scourge,_ recent recruit of the . . . Second Signless’ Rebellion?”

“Movement for the Second Alternian Empire,” Kanaya supplies helpfully.

“Movement for the Second Alternian Empire! Thank you. Believe it or not, she is very pleased to meet you.”

“Karkat Vantas,” Karkat says. “General. Person in charge.”

“We gathered that,” Terezi agrees, delicately. “Now, I understand how the vagueness of Her Majesty’s commands can be frustrating. Believe me, _we’re_ the ones who had to haul all the way over here! But we were hoping that you, perhaps, could clarify for us whatever you would like us to do, and then, we would perform it, to the best of our abilities.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Management,” she says, “was the word that Her Majesty used, and I imagine that it would not be an erroneous assignment. Perhaps we could be deployed to oversee whatever it is you do, exactly, here.”

Kanaya prods him. “You were saying,” she encourages, “I believe, only last perigee, how you suffered for lack of good help,” and Terezi decides that she likes Kanaya Maryam, possibly very much.

“Not this help,” he argues, but it’s more complaint than a command. 

“Any help is help. We are not rich in it.”

“That still doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.”

“How about you give them a try,” she suggests, “before putting them on a command, or turning them away. It is difficult to estimate their utility from a single conversation. Run a test. Show them the proverbial ropes.”

His mouth flattens. “What I _should_ be doing,” he says, “is tossing them out on their asses and hoping that their reek doesn’t bring every drone in the vicinity running.”

Kanaya waits. Vriska takes a forceful bite of grubloaf and chews with her mouth open, exuding an aura of apathy too obvious to be real. Terezi isn’t sure which Vriska prefers. Certainly things would be simpler if Karkat tossed them out. Feferi might not be pleased, but they would have options, moving from there.

All the same, Terezi isn’t certain that there’s anywhere they could go with impunity, at this point, except the ravages of deep space. They’re fugitives. They have few options at all. 

Karkat cuts into a cube of tuber so forcefully his knife scrapes the plate. “But,” he amends, “that’d piss off Peixes.”

“Most likely,” Terezi affirms.

“So my prongs are tied.” He gestures with his fork. “You can tag along on our feeding mission tomorrow. See if you’re worth the caegars it takes to feed you.” A small grin tugs at his mouth. “Nice easy trip. There and back, two hours, tops.” 

Vriska laughs. “Kid,” she says, “I’m worth twice the caegars it takes to feed this compound.” 

“We’ll be delighted,” Terezi says, before Karkat can retort. “Landing Bay 7?”

He nods.

“Looking forward to it,” she says, and then hustles Vriska out of the dining block before anyone can say anything else.

 

* * *

 

Five hundred hours treads the line between dusk and night. The sun flickers on the horizon still, and its atrocious heat lingers in the air. On the opposite horizon, the moons have begun their ascent over the sky. Landing Bay 7 is open-air, which means that a current is free to stir Terezi’s hair as she walks across it.

A speedlift sits on the center of the dais. It’s maybe fifty feet long and shaped like a bisected cylinder, with the flat part laying parallel to the ground. It hovers, indicating that its engines are already warm. There’s an open cavity in its hull through which Terezi can smell the cabin, the only apparent method of entry.

“That’s probably us.” She approaches. The floor of the cabin floats at chest level. She could climb on, but there’s no way she’s doing that and retaining her dignity in the bargain.

“I don’t like this,” Vriska announces.

“Come on, Captain! This probably isn’t even the most dangerous thing you’ve done all week.” 

“I’m not scared. I just don’t trust them. Vantas, especially, he’s got it in for both of us.”

“He was understandably weary. Not everyone greets unexpected and dangerous guests with the hospitality of Feferi Peixes.”

“I don’t need him to be hospitable. A little civility wouldn’t go astray.”

“Civility. That’s the principle you’re taking here? Civility? You.”

“I’ve got _rights_ to be arrogant. I’ve done shit worth being arrogant over. What’s he done? Crawled out of the right slurry?”

“He’s orchestrated a considerably large anticasteist movement. Now, I’m sure that your track record of piracy is admirable, but —”

“You can trust pirates to be pirates,” Vriska says. “And you can trust thieves to be thieves. You can trust scumhives to be scumhives, and bureaucretins to be bureaucretins. But you can’t trust the ethical to be anything. They’re entirely arbitrary. I know a greedy troll’s going to be greedy; I know a cruel troll’s going to be cruel. What am I supposed to do with a Sufferite?”

“Then keep a weary ocular on Vantas, and pipe down about it. Announcing that you don’t trust people is a poor way to make friends.” 

“I don’t want to be friends with Shouty McNubs.”

“General Vantas is a very important party in the organization we are currently entangled with, and antagonizing him is probably not the best idea you have ever had.”

“He antagonizes everyone else. Turnabout is fair play.” 

“General Vantas, like most people of authority, has the privilege of being an unlikable person. We do not.”

“Having freak blood doesn’t give you prerogative to be an ass.”

“I am beginning to understand why your military career was short-lived,” Terezi says. “Now be a good diamond and help your vertically challenged moirail.”

Vriska, snorting, obligingly kneels and makes a stirrup with her hands. Terezi settles her boot inside it, and Vriska hefts her up and onto the deck of the speedlift. Terezi, in turn, holds out her hand, and helps haul her inside.

The cabin of the speedlift is grey, lined with plastic seats along either curved wall, and porthole-windows letting in an odd, filtered white light. The center aisle is narrow enough that when she sits down, her knees almost brush those of the troll across from her, and fluorescents buzz and snap overhead. Terezi settles into the seat nearest the exit and accepts a flight helmet from the troll opposite her, who only stares at her ostentatious shades for ten seconds before snapping out of it and averting his eyes. Vriska plops down to her left and shoves her helmet on without bothering to buckle it. 

A comm fizzles to life in Terezi’s ear. It’s the only sound she can pick up. The layers of padding and metal serve to cancel out any peripheral noises coming from the speedlift, in order to make communication possible once they’re in the air. Given that the way she’d entered the cabin didn’t seem to have a door, she hazards a guess that it’s an open lift, designed for cargo transport and speed in disembarking, but the only time she’d ever been in a speedlift before, there had been full flight suits provided. It wouldn’t be an issue, except that the flight suits had harnesses tethering trolls to the lift itself, and Terezi knows better than to trust either luck or prong-ocular coordination. 

She prods the troll that handed her the helmet, who inclines their head to listen. “Hey,” she says. “Who’s running this schtick? Who’s Top of the Op?”

The troll laughs. “Same guy as always, mate. Where you been?” 

“Not on this planet, thank you. Who’s the same guy as always?”

As if on cue, Karkat Vantas hauls himself onto the lift, his weight shaking the vehicle gently from side to side. “Evening, assholes,” he announces, accepting a helmet. “Glad to see none of your lusii are going to be fish food today.”

Some murmur greetings in reply. He takes notice of Terezi and Vriska, and it brings a grim smile to his face.

“Welcome aboard,” he says. “Kind of figured you’d be a no-show.”

“Please,” Vriska snickers. “As if feeding your boss’ lusus is tough shit. Maybe we’ll go play some FLARP afterwards, you know, for a real challenge.”

“Yeah, your whole pirate schtick will fit right in.”

“Wow, funny! So will your ‘pupa’s first infantry’ outfit. What, did they forget to issue you a new jacket after you pailed that hoofbeast?”

“General,” the pilot says, loathe to interrupt, “engines are prepared for takeoff. All present and accounted for.”

“Great. Why are we still on the ground, then?” Karkat snaps, grabbing hold of a bar running along the ceiling. “Get going.” 

The pilot complies. The speedlift purrs, and then rises, moving straight vertical and then beginning to drift east over the compound. Their velocity picks up, and Terezi struggles to get a concrete scent through the twisting air currents. Clear shapes distort and becomes impressionist blurs, ephemeral, indistinct. Vriska’s hair lashes at her. 

They pass the compound and move out over the open countryside. The Capitol is in the opposite direction, but even so, Terezi catches a whiff of it behind them: glittering, imposing, near. A trio of Imperial drones skim low to the ground a few miles away, and she tenses instinctively. The jagged silhouette activates a flight response in even the least sane of trolls, and Terezi is not the least sane of trolls.

Karkat catches wind of them, and, almost sympathetic, says, “They don’t attack unprovoked, and they won’t notice us at this distance. They’re dumb as they come.”

“Wouldn’t it be safer,” Terezi says, “for you to stay in the compound?”

The question blindsides him, but it distracts her. It switches her mind from anxiety to curiosity, which is an infinitely more workable status quo. 

“Because of my blood color, you mean.”

“Yes. I mean, when you were an adolescent, it wouldn’t be an issue, but by now, Mr. Cherry, you’ve got your grown-up peepers all filled in.” Terezi indicates her own with two fingers. “And, incidentally, they’re the same color as mine.”

“Staying in the compound isn’t functional,” he says flatly. “With the number of missions that need to be handled outside it, I’d be a pretty piss-poor leader if I kept locked up in there.”

“So use Trollian! Or some other system of comms. It’s not like risking yourself will do any good, anyway.” 

“You sound like the Lieutenant,” the troll at Terezi’s side murmurs, and Karkat fixes them with a frigid look.

“Interesting,” Terezi trills, delighted. “Do I? How invested is the Lieutenant in our General’s state of affairs?”

“I will push your ass out of this speedlift, Pyrope,” Karkat promises, “so help me Troll God.” 

“Please try. I need a good laugh.” 

The hills undulate and then plateau. The ground begins sinking, coarsening into brown-white sand. 

Vriska folds her legs. “So the Glob-gollib thing,” she says. “Where’d it get a name like that?”

“It’s Peixes’ lusus,” Karkat says. “Big-ass horrorterror. Eats other animals, or anything with meat on it, really. Except it’s so damn big it can hardly hunt for itself, the inept fuck. So we’ve gotta put our asses on the line to fix it.”

She whistles. “Horrorterror, huh,” she drawls, which suggests she doesn’t really believe it. “And what’s so important about keeping it happy, again?”

“If it starts whispering,” Terezi says, “it’ll kill every troll under greenblood. Anything louder, and it moves up the hemospectrum.”

“How can it do that?”

“It’s a horrorterror. Who knows how it can do anything?” She shrugs. Vriska frowns, but doesn’t push the point.

“So where are we getting the meat?”

Karkat picks up the line of interrogation once more. “The thing’s as big as an office building,” he tells her. “We’d need perigees to get together enough normal animals for a light snack. The only place where you can find anything big enough for it is out here.” 

“How big are we talking?”

It’s with a very smug glint in his eye that he says, “You’ll see.”

The lift glides out over the ocean, the continent falling away behind them and shrinking into a smear on the horizon. The eastern edge of the sky curves, so broad does the sea stretch, dark and opaque in the dim night, under the cast of one purple moon in its first quarter and a green one in its last. Terezi breathes it in and is prodded again by melancholy. 

They begin to gain altitude again, and a cold breeze skipping across the ocean fills the cabin. The clouds descend and engulf them. Mist permeates the cabin. Condensation gathers over Terezi’s visor, and she scrubs it away with her sleeve. An eerie silence settles over the group.

At what must be thirty-thousand feet, the aircraft levels out and slows to a crawl. With the decrease in speed, her nose returns, picking up hints of color and pieces of emotion wafting from those closest to her. Vriska fades into being. So does Karkat, and the other soldiers, each a little less vivid than they had been on the ground, but still perceivable, and so she is grateful. 

A troll with hair sprouting from their scalp like a black dandelion unbuckles themselves and reaches up to a compartment in the side of the speedlift, removing an absolutely enormous gun. They have to settle it on the floor to aim it properly, which they do, thereafter resting it on a stand and shifting the butt onto their shoulder. Karkat oversees it, casting periodic glances out the open door.

The troll finishes setting up the firearm and aims at a target somewhere in the clouds. Terezi sniffs curiously. Vriska leans over to try and get a look at what they’re aiming for, to no avail. The aircraft is quiet. 

“Steady,” Karkat warns.

The troll blinks and holds still as stone. 

“Wait for it,” Karkat says. “Wait.”

A long, pregnant pause elapses.

With a moan like iron being rent in two, an enormous white whale leaps from the clouds, cleaving the ash-grey fog with its broad, forked tail. It’s almost twice the size of the speedlift, with dull black eyes and fins twice the size of a full-grown troll. It swims through the air at a velocity that surpasses the aircraft, even though its movements are slow and sluggish.

“Thar she blows,” one of the soldiers cackles. Karkat cuffs him over the head and shouts, “Fire!” 

The troll fires. The gun erupts with a bolt of blue energy, arcing towards the exposed underbelly of the skywhale. It shrieks, contorting, and the gun blows a hole clean through its stomach. Purple blood spills from the wound, and it falters, stalling in the sky. It was caught on the downstroke of its tail; the momentary lift keeps it aloft just long enough for Terezi to realize it’s about to fall. 

“Go,” Karkat says, “go, go, go!”

Five trolls leap off the side in quick succession. Stretched between them is a thick, well-knotted mesh of rope, an enormous coil of which unspools from a compartment in the bottom of the lift. Terezi cranes her neck to get a whiff of what they’re doing, and Vriska goes so far as to unbuckle herself and stand on the edge, peering out.

The trolls arc over the thing’s falling carcass, slipping lengths of rope over its back and under its belly, dancing around each other, under each other, a well-choreographed exercise in airborne elegance. The rope fastens under it, and the pilot calls, “Brace,” and the lift shudders violently. The whale’s body settles into the net, and the lift plummets a few feet before the engines adjust to the extra weight and kick into high gear. The jerk tosses Vriska, and almost goes flying out the door, but Karkat’s hand darts out and seizes her by the back of her greatcoat. 

“Keep your fucking seatbelt on,” he bellows, and shoves her back toward Terezi. She stumbles into her seat.

The lift turns and starts heading east. The wind picks up again, and Terezi says, “I didn’t know skywhales were white.”

“They’re not,” Karkat says, absentmindedly. He’s busy checking a panel on the side of the cabin, entering something on the screen. “That’s not a skywhale.” 

She cocks her head, and it only takes her a moment. 

“That’s someone’s lusus.”

“Mm-hm.” 

She wets her lips, almost says something, and closes them. Vriska exercises no such restraint.

“So are you gonna go find that sad sucker, or are you just gonna let them figure their lusus up and fucked off one day?”

“If that orphan’s got a bone to pick with my calculus, they can bring it up.” He looks at her. “You know what Gl’bgolyb can do, if it gets testy. It’s one lonely troll for a couple dozen billion. You want me to write out the math for you?”

“Don’t lecture me,” Vriska says acidly, “on the virtue of _sacrifice_.” 

“Then don’t get uppity about it.” 

Terezi covertly slips her hand under the armrest and wraps it around Vriska’s wrist. Vriska looks down and seems, uncharacteristically, to have taken the high road. Terezi is almost proud of her.

She itches to talk to Vriska about it, but their comms are all public, and she doesn’t know how to set up a private channel. Instead, she squeezes her wrist, once, and retracts her hand. She hopes it will communicate what she cannot say. If it does, Vriska shows no sign of it, but keeps her face angled towards the water. 

The lift’s nose dips and it enters a gentle decline. “Approaching target site,” the pilot says. 

“Rogerr, rogerr.” Karkat slams shut the panel and grips the harness bar with one hand. “All hands, prep for dismount.”

The others reach around to the back of their seat and withdraw elastic tethers, all of which fasten to a hook at the back of their suits. Terezi feels around behind her and finds it, fastens it; it emits a quick _click_ when she does it successfully, and she gives it an experimental tug. The cord runs up to the same bar on the ceiling as the others’ harnesses.

“Here,” the pilot chirps. Karkat frowns at the water. 

“You sure?”

“It’s the designated coordinates, captain.” 

“Must be in a deeper sleep cycle,” he says. “Anyway. Everyone on your nubs, even if you’re not on the dismount team. Be prepped to go in and help.” 

A few trolls are already half-out of their seat when a white tentacle erupts from the water, spraying seafoam around it in a silver cloud, and shoots toward the lift with unnatural speed. Karkat swears, briefly, and the pilot puts on a boost of acceleration to avoid it. The jerk pushes Terezi against the back of her seat and sucks the air from her lungs. 

“Shit,” says Karkat. “Shit, shit, shit, _move!”_

A nest of identical white limbs is sprouting from the surface of the water, at least several dozen all twining around each other in grotesque, eldritch tangles and knots, each barbed with a long, sharp talon at its end. The ocean churns into a whirlpool and bubbles erupt from it, exploding. The tentacles ring around a patch of empty ocean, like teeth ringing an enormous black gullet, and far below the surface Terezi gets a whiff of _real_ teeth, jagged, dark grey, and rimmed with a rainbow of color. 

“That’s it,” she says faintly. “Her lusus.”

“Thanks, Counselor,” Karkat roars, clutching the side of the lift, “ _thank_ you for this scintillating exercise of your spectacular deductive gifts! Yes, it’s her fucking lusus!”

The speedlift takes a sharp right to avoid being snared by yet another tentacle, and then banks left to correct its course. Terezi feels as though she has boarded a poorly planned amusement ride. 

“The Heiress’ lusus?” Vriska chokes. “She lived with that thing?”

“Is now the time to be discussing Peixes’ wrigglerhood? Because I feel like now is not the time to be discussing Peixes’ wrigglerhood!”

“How did she not get fuckin’ _eaten?”_

“How many lusii do you know that eat their kids?”

Vriska’s face darkens almost imperceptibly. Terezi intercedes. “It’s the Ambassador to the Horrorterrors,” she supplies. “It’d be bad diplomacy to eat the Heiress.” 

“But other trolls,” Vriska prompts, and Terezi nods.

“Just fine.” 

“Great,” she says. “So there’s no diplomatic immunity for its daughter’s friends, then?”

Karkat barks a laugh. “I mean,” he says, “if you get caught down there, feel free to bring it up. Can’t hurt your chances.” 

A tentacle snakes perilously close to the side of the vehicle. Terezi flinches as the barbed end scrapes along the metal hull with a showering of sparks, and the lift shudders. 

“I thought it was hibernating,” she cries.

“It _is_ hibernating!” Karkat snarls. He clings to the rail with both hands to keep from being bucked off the speedlift. “This is it when it’s sleeping!”

Terezi remembers Sollux, wryly amused: _We’ve had to veto seven proposals from our allies to kill the thing while it’s still asleep._ She hadn’t understood.

Another pale shape whips towards the vehicle’s nose, fast as a diving featherbeast, and the pilot flings her into a roll to avoid being struck. Gravity flips on its axis and thrusts Terezi against her restraints as the speedlift spins in midair, twists downward, and curves back up. The engines scream with the effort of maintaining altitude. The sudden movement tosses Karkat against the ceiling, which he strikes with a grunt and a heavy _thump;_ when the speedlift pulls out of its spin, he’s flung towards the open door, his side catching on the doorframe. He scrabbles for a handhold and finds it in one of the boarding handles above Terezi’s seat. When the plane hooks into a sharp upward curve, he braces his feet against the side of the plane and pushes himself upright, breathing sharp and fast into the comm.

“Keep this thing parallel to the fucking ground,” he roars, and Terezi winces, eardrums throbbing. “So help me —”

“Sorry, General!” The pilot’s voice, understandably tense, comes through under layers of static. “I can’t get close without —”

“Did I ask for excuses, or did I ask for motherfucking results?”

“Yessir! Sorry, sir!” 

The lift hits an altitude where a chill creeps across Terezi’s skin, and it levels out. They appear to be beyond the horrorterror’s reach: its tentacles wave lazily below, the tallest still maybe a hundred feet from the bottom of the aircraft. The pilot sets the lift into a turn and stays that way, circling the creature’s gaping maw in a broad arc. 

“All right,” says Karkat, straightening his jacket. “Savnet, Kivyes, Bartoc, you head below, start the discharge. I want Reedle and Tanata on point. Everyone else, make themselves useful.” He tugs on his leash to secure it and then leaps once more from the lift, his coil of rope rapidly slithering off the side. 

“Dramatic,” Vriska remarks, and unbuckles herself, rising. “Who’s Savnet?”

A tall troll with stocky limbs and a snake tattoo twining around their left eye lifts their hand, using the other to check their own rigging. “Here,” they say. “Kivyes and Bartoc are six and three o’clock, respectively.” 

“Great. We’re coming.”

Savnet turns to Kivyes, who, after an evaluative once-over, nods his approval. “Fine,” they say. “Stay behind. Don’t slow us down.”

“I’ll do my best.” Vriska reeks of excitement.

Terezi coughs, and when that fails to garner Vriska’s attention, she says, “We’re coming, now, are we?”

Vriska turns to her and shrugs. “I got bored,” she says. Her eyes glitter with a vicious, adrenaline-laced excitement. “You don’t have to come.” 

“Come do _what?”_

“Feed it. Fight it. Whatever, I’ll know once I’m doing it.”

“Will you!”

Vriska grins, tugging on her harness. “Look,” she says. “If you want to chill out up here, hanging around, doing nothing, that’s your choice. No disrespect. I, for one, am gonna go say hi to the horrorterror.”

“Vriska,” Terezi begins.

Vriska swan-dives off the edge of the speedlift, and Terezi thumps her head back against the wall. 

“Uh,” says Kivyes. “So she doesn’t know —”

“No,” says Terezi, shortly.

“And she’s just —”

“Yes.”

“Um,” he says to Terezi. “You, uh — you coming, too?” 

“Yes, obviously,” she says, tugging on her harness to double-check its security. “And if I die doing this, please tell her that it was entirely her fault, and that I want her to know my last thought was regret that my moirail is such a very very stupid troll.”

He hesitates, as if gauging whether or not she’s serious, and probably judging her, a little bit, for the ‘moirail’ bit. She levels him with a dead-eyed stare.

“Do you understand me?”

“Okay,” he says uncertainly. “Yes . . . ma’am?”

“Good,” she says. “Then we can proceed.” With as much dignity as she can muster, she steps off the edge of the speedlift.

Vertigo guts her like a claw to the thorax as her body comes to the realization, slower than her pan did, that there’s nothing under her nubs, and the ocean rushes up to meet her. She knows, on a cognitive level, that she’s not free-falling. Any second now, the cord is going to run out, and she’s going to stop, and her stomach will stop turning, and her vision will stop spinning, but it’s hard, because her intestine has convinced itself she’s just leapt to her death and accordingly is threatening to revolt. 

Then the harness snaps taut, and she swings around, hurtling towards the dangling corpse of the skywhale. She lands on it with a grunt and a shock that travels from her heels up to her head, and grabs at some of the netting for something to hold on to. Others have already latched onto the body, and are busy cutting away the strands that hold it to the lift. Terezi surmises that they mean to drop it in the sea. 

The others have handheld serrated knives, about the lengths of their palm, which they use to hack away at the rope. Terezi, lacking one, draws the only blade she has from her cane-sheath, and follows their example. 

There are maybe two dozen strands to be cut through, and each takes about a minute — not the cutting itself, but climbing into an optimal position to make the cut, getting sufficient leverage, and severing all the strands of the braided rope with a single attempt require more time than they would if they had a solid surface to stand on. Curses and muffled grunts come in from over the comm every time someone loses their footing. Even though the harnesses keep them from falling, the sensation of slipping triggers an instinct buried at the back of the thinkpan, namely, the panic instinct.

Gl’bgolyb is suspiciously docile for half a minute. Terezi almost believes that it’s entered a deeper stage of its sleep cycle, or that it has tired of hunting them, and decided to leave them be. 

Then a tentacle, taller than its brethren, rockets towards them, bypasses them, and loops over the top of the lift. With an inexorable strength, it begins tugging, drawing the vehicle down.

“Shit,” Karkat says. “Fuck. Get it off, get it off, get it off —”

“We’re a little busy down here, General!” Vriska slides down a few feet, beats at one skinny appendage attempting to throttle one of the soldiers. 

“And you won’t be busy for much longer, if it doesn’t get its mitts off the lift!”

She releases a loud noise of aggravation. “Just engage the safety shield, dumbass!”

“What the fuck is that?”

“It’s — oh my God, how have any of you lived this long — it’s an electricity field that kicks in when the pilot shifts into high-velocity gear! It keeps featherbeasts and shit off the engines — it’ll electrify the hull and shock anything that comes into contact with it, shit-for-pan!”

“How the fuck do you know —”

“I’m a fucking _SEAGRIFT,”_ Vriska howls, “how the FUCK did you think I got around, _two-wheel devices —_ ”

“All right! All right! Fine! Engage the safety shield!”

A crackling matrix of white electricity burns to live around the ship’s hull, and the tentacle loosens. For a moment, it seems to have worked. 

Then a second tentacle curls around the body of the lift, which groans with the strain of staying airborne. Karkat curses, and Terezi makes an executive decision.

She braces her feet on the whale’s carcass and pushes off, soaring through the air. She sweeps out her blade in a long, fluid movement, and it cuts through the tentacle like a knife through silk. Spinning with her momentum, she backhands the second arm, severing the limb. Black blood spurts from the wound, and the tentacles retract. She grips her harness and swings back to the skywhale, her feet landing on it with a solid jolt. 

Some of the crew are eying her with something approaching impressment. She tries not to take it as a compliment.

But now the thing’s identified them as the cause of its distress, or, at least, it has noticed the meal, and it reaches twining fingers for the skywhale net. The tallest of them snares the edge of Terezi’s harness and slides down, running its cold, slimy skin over her body. She shudders and kicks at it, repressing the urge to gag. It smells like nothing and everything, like space, like mucus and dust and ancient things. She wants the scent of it out of her mouth, out of her lungs, out, out, _out_.

Savnet leans over and brings their blade down on the limb. It severs clean, and the amputated limb slithers back. The tip clings to Terezi’s leg until she shakes her ankle and sends it flying into the ocean below.

“Thanks,” she manages. 

Savnet nods, touches two fingers to their forehead in brief recognition, and returns to their task. Terezi shifts her grip on her sword and does the same. 

They make steady headway. The cords attaching the whale to the lift fall away under their blades, and cleanly, too, with a kind of efficiency that suggests most of the trolls here are not new to this rodeo. Vriska, on the other side of the animal, is not helping at all — she lacks a blade with which to do anything — but rather hangs off the edge of the lusus, whooping with laughter and hysterical exhilaration as the lift spins, her head tipped back, moonlight falling on the hard planes of her face. She is all angles, now, all weird light and sharp lines and a red hot happiness that Terezi hasn’t ever known from her except when she’s running from something, and it spears Terezi in the bloodpusher. Terezi averts her nose.

“Getting close,” Bartoc remarks. “I’m heading up. Reedle, you coming with?”

“Yeah, course. Tanata, haul us up.” 

“Rroger.” The pair of trolls fall away and start climbing their harnesses to get back to the cabin. The remainder move in towards the final strands, and the net groans, clearly near the breaking point. Beneath them, the horrorterror reaches for them again, regrouping and making another attempt; this injects urgency into their proceedings, and they work faster, cut with less grace and more speed, use clumsy swings where a well-placed slice would have done better. 

An arm lashes the skywhale itself, opening a fountain of hot purple blood that scalds Terezi through her suit. There’s shouting, and some commotion, and the animal shakes, threatening to buck them all free; Kivyes leaps, releasing his hold on the net, and cleaves away three thick ropes with a single stroke. The remaining netting, too weak to handle the weight of the lusus by itself, snaps, and the skywhale plummets. Rope bucks under their hold with the sudden release of tension, and some of it snaps back against Terezi, lashing at her arm and coiling around her ankles. It tangles there, tugging at her, and she shifts to kick it away, but ends up wedging her foot further in. 

Several members of the crew were sent flying by the release, including Savnet and Vriska. They wheel around in midair, wriggling up their harnesses for leverage, while those still stationary begin climbing back toward the lift. Terezi contorts and tries to get friction between her blade and the netting, to little avail.

A tentacle catches the tail of Vriska’s greatcoat and tears it open, knocking her off her balance. A sharp curse bursts from Terezi’s comm. Vriska’s tether sways like a great pendulum, carrying her out over the center of the whirlpool, far away from the others. 

She leans out as far as she can, one hand wrapped around her tether to steady herself, the other reaching into her coat and drawing out a large pistol, which she aims at the churning gap where the thing’s mouth should be. 

“Don’t shoot!” Karkat shouts, his volume causing the comm to glitch and fizz static. “Not in the mouth! We can’t kill it! We can’t kill it!”

Vriska cocks her shotgun and sneers. “What, like a few bullets are going to take it out? That thing’s the size of a city block, I’ll probably hit a tentacle anyway —”

“Yeah, and you’ll wake it up, which would be even fucking _worse!”_

“Why?” she demands, and Terezi fears — for a terrible, awful, guilt-inducing instant — that Vriska’s recklessness is not recklessness alone, but that Vriska remembers who goes first when Gl’bgolyb starts singing, and she doesn’t care. 

“You can’t,” she says, pressing her mouth close to the comm. “Vriska? Vriska. You can’t. Put the gun down.”

A tentacle brushes the underside of the lift and the whole vehicle rocks, destabilizing the trolls still dangling from their harnesses.

“Put the gun _down.”_

Vriska tenses and for a moment her finger seems to flutter over the trigger. Terezi’s anxiety is a wound length of knotted sinew tangling around her heart.

Then she shoves the gun back into its holster and begins scrambling up the rope. “That thing comes near me again,” she says, “I’m blowing its intestinal track halfway to the Handmaid, I don’t care what humanitarian impulse you bulge-brained fuckers are nursing.” 

“Deal,” Karkat says. “Get your ass on the lift.”

“I’m trying, shitlick, does it look like I’m having a fucking hot leaf beverage party down here?”

Terezi adjusts her grip on the strand of netting and clings to it as the ship makes another pass around Gl’bgolyb. The thing has calmed after receiving the food; a few limbs lace over the skywhale’s white carcass and drag it down to the deeps. 

With a careful stroke, she cuts away some of the rope twined around her leg. The swordstick cleaves through the twine easily, too easily, removing a stripe of her clothing with it, narrowly missing her skin. She hisses a curse between her teeth and shifts her grip, cutting the next piece with more caution. The lift’s movement makes it difficult to maneuver without either tangling herself in further or dropping her sword. If she drops her sword, she will not be getting it back.

“Pyrope, what are you doing?” Karkat is brusque. “Move.” 

“I can’t,” she pants, “at present, General, but failing further setback, should be able to comply with all due expediency —”

“Setback? What happened?” Vriska is sharp, unnerved.

“I’m a bit tied up — ha —”

“What?”

“The netting,” she says. “After the skywhale was cut free, the netting, ah, snapped —”

“Why is this the first time we’re hearing about this?” Vriska’s head turns in midair. Terezi can’t see her face through the helmet, but she can hear anger through the comm. “Didn’t anyone notice you hanging around like Troll Spiderman?” 

“They were a bit occupied, Vriska.”

“Occupied with getting their asses kicked,” she mutters. “Hold on, I’m coming to get you.”

“Oh, no, you are not! What do you intend to do? Shoot the netting off?” Terezi rolls her eyes and hacks away another knot. “I have the situation under control, Captain. Get back on the lift.”

“Pyrope’s right,” Karkat snaps. “We don’t have time for you to waste. She’s got a blade, she can manage a bit of string.” 

“How’s she supposed to climb if she’s got to hold the sword, dipshit?” 

“Ingenuity!”

“Does that mean ‘I don’t know’ in asshole?”

“Does _that_ mean ‘Yes, General, I will do that completely reasonable and absolutely mandatory thing you are telling me to’ in nooksniffer?”

“Bite me.”

“Bite _me._ And do it after you get your ass back on the goddamn lift.”

Terezi’s harness has, in her efforts to wriggle free, entwined itself with the leftover netting. Terezi examines the knot, calculates the time it would take to untangle it versus the time she has left before the horrorterror finishes its snack, and finds the odds to be unfavorable. 

“Ladies,” she announces. “You are both hideous! On a side note, I am cutting off my harness.”

Ignoring Karkat’s screeching “ _WHAT,”_ she levels her sword with the tethering cord over her head and detaches it in a swift slice. The tension holding her up disappears, and her full weight falls on the arm holding her to the netting. She grunts with the sudden additional effort.

“Terezi,” Vriska says, “what the hell are you doing?”

“Resolving matters,” Terezi chirps, and kicks the last of the knots free. “There! Perfectly fine. On the other hand, I am now without a harness. Don’t drop the netting, please.” 

She sheathes her sword and sticks the cane in her belt. The shaft slips for a terrifying moment before the dragon-head catches against her hip and stays; she gives it an experimental pat, and it stays. Wedging her foot in one of the rope crosshatches she reaches for a handhold and starts to climb. 

Vriska has one hand on the edge of the lift, but refrains from boarding. “You okay?” 

“Yes! I am, in fact, capable of climbing without help.”

“You don’t have a harness. I do. I could —” Terezi’s foot slips and for a moment she’s hanging by her hands, legs dangling over open water. Vriska’s breath hitches until Terezi hooks a knee over another hold and hauls herself up, arms shaking with the effort.

“I am fine,” Terezi insists. “Buckle in, for the love of the Handmaid, and quit distracting me.”

Vriska makes a disbelieving sound, but scrambles over the edge anyway. Hands reach out and pull her in, and then it’s only Terezi outside of the lift, alone except for the sound of her breathing and the sharp abrade of rope against her hands. She’s going to have burns all over her palms. 

The silence is interrupted by a whistling noise in her ear. She cocks her head, in the middle of reaching for her next handhold, and strains to hear.

A tentacle slams into her body from the side, knocking her clean from the rope ladder, sending her into freefall. Her hand snags at the rope and she catches herself maybe a dozen feet from the edge of the net, spinning madly. The interior of her thinkpan roils like a twister, from the way the net is thrashing and from the blow both. When she tries to lick the screen of her helmet, her tongue catches on a new crack in the glass.

Gl’bgolyb finished its snack. Now its arms rise once more from the water, the current beginning to writhe, and the ocean rumbles with a low, burbling kind of noise. Terezi’s ears start ringing. 

The arm comes whipping around again, and she twists, in an attempt to dodge, but it doesn’t work; the barbed tip catches her full across the back, with the force of a block of concrete, and in between the pain and the dizziness and the sheer shock it sends skittering over her body her hand spasms, and then she’s tumbling from the net, past the bottom, into open air.

_“Terezi!”_

Vriska screams so loud her ears throb with it. Terezi turns end over end, her body scrambling for a hold that her mind knows does not exist. Panic surges for a horrific, electrically painful moment, and then something clicks, and all emotion vanishes like a candle snuffed out by a quick, cold breath. 

Her thoughts fall into order. She knows:

There are three ways she can die from this point. Assuming Gl’bgolyb catches her before she hits the water, it will eat her. This death will probably be painful and long. That is unideal. Assuming that it does not catch her, she will strike the ocean at what is rapidly approaching terminal velocity, resulting in severe trauma to the spinal cord. This will kill her immediately, but it will not take long. If she lands in such a way that the damage is insufficient to kill her, and Gl’bgolyb does not find her under the waves, she will drown from water flooding the flight helmet’s oxygen reservoir. This will kill her slowly, but it will not be painful. 

She knows: Dying shortly is preferable to dying painlessly; she angles her body so that she will make contact with the ocean at the apex of her spine.

(This is the kernel of the Academy nestled at the bottom of her brain: this is her professor in Advanced Torture, cutting open Terezi’s back with the point of swordstick and saying, _Think,_ and shoving Terezi’s head into a bucket of icewater and saying, _Think,_ and tightening a noose around Terezi’s throat and saying, _Think._ This is pain receding from Terezi’s body like poison being flushed from her veins, replaced by numb lines of logic.)

Someone is shouting very loudly in her ear.

Then a vise closes around her ankle, and she jerks so hard that for a moment it’s like there’s a disconnect between her head and her neck, the entirety of her sensory input drowning in a white static shock of pain. It comes back with a pang and a flourish, all hurt, all warm, all alive. She snaps herself out of it and twists to find _Kivyes_ , of all people, with his hand clasped around her foot and hauling her up by the leg. 

“Oh my God,” she says, faintly. The shouting has stopped. All is silent. 

His harness is still attached to the lift, stretched taut; they’re both dangling at the very end of it. He’s holding another harness wrapped around his fist. As he slings an arm under her armpit and hauls her right-way up, he unlatches the broken scrap of harness still attached to her suit and pulls the free harness taut trying to get it hooked on.

Still a bit dizzy, she bows her neck to give him better access. With a faint _click_ , he gets it secured, and then braces her. They’re still swinging pretty wildly as a result of their sudden stop. He has to have dived from the lift to catch her in time; he would have had to act almost immediately.

“Thank you,” she yells, but he doesn’t reply. When he leans in closer to tug the straps, she catches a whiff of his face. His eyes are glazed and distant, moving sluggishly, wildly in contrast with the brisk precision of his movements. His face is slack, devoid even of concern for their current predicament.

“Hey,” she says, rapping on the side of his helmet. “Your comm working?”

Before he can answer, a white limb comes shooting up from the water. She unsheathes her sword and makes a clumsy slash at it, but it misses, and they only barely avoid being battered by it. It’s got too wide a range of movement, and her too narrow, to enable any kind of combat in her position. 

“Climb,” he says. His voice is stilted and guttural. “They will pull you up.” 

“That thing’s going to come back around!”

“Climb,” he repeats, and draws his specibus. Hammerkind. It isn’t going to do a thing against the horrorterror.

She opens her mouth to reply, but her harness is already being reeled in, and she’s being hauled up by the people in the lift. She rockets upward, flailing, and he starts climbing after her.

A tentacle strikes his harness with a shuddering _thwack_ and twines around it, sliding down until it makes contact with him. He thrashes. He beats it. The blows seem to glance off it. Another slides around and coils around his leg, tugging, first gently, then with more force, and his tether strains thin.

“It’s got him,” Terezi says, “someone — it’s got him,” but even if someone dove right now, it would be too late: an arm snakes around his neck, flexing with something near gentility, as if the horrorterror is embracing him — and he goes still, eyes still glassy and slow.

Then, with a crack like marble splitting, his harness snaps.

There is no one to catch him. He plummets from the sky. 

Curiously, he is silent. He doesn’t scream. He doesn’t cry for help. He just watches the sky, limbs limp, face slack, as the horrorterror hauls him down.

And then, after he’s only a few dozen feet from the water, a light catches in his eye, and he starts screaming.

It’s cut off by the sound of his head hitting the sea. There’s a horrific _crack_ from through the comm, and then nothing. By Terezi’s guess, the helmet must have broken. 

She’s hauled over the edge of the lift and dumped unceremoniously on the floor. She lies there for a moment, breathing hard, clinging to the beautifully _solid_ ground, until a hand clasps the back of her jacket and hauls her into a seat. It’s Vriska, clinging to her with a grip tight enough to crush glass, who straps her in, mouth tight and face charcoal-pale. She’s shaking. Her fingers poke and prod without sophistication, without coordination, and her scent is almost blotted out with lemony fear. 

“It’s,” Terezi manages, and then, having to take another few breaths before she finds the energy to finish the sentence, “it’s all right,” and, “I’m, I’m all right,” and then her head lolls forward onto her chest, and she passes out.

 

* * *

 

She nods to life with a knock to her shoulder. The speedlift is stationary.

Trolls are filing out of the cabin, some murmuring words of congratulations or relief, mostly silent. The moons are angled near the western horizon, suggesting that midnight has come and gone long since. 

Slowly, she pulls her helmet off. Hearing returns with an influx of white noise and fresh air, and she sucks fresh oxygen into her lungs for the first time in what seems like sweeps.

“You able to walk?” Vriska extends her hand, which Terezi grasps to haul herself up. 

“Yes.”

Karkat is among the last to disembark. He lingers on the landing bay, arms folded, waiting for them to climb down themselves. Vriska strides past him briskly, laying her hand on Terezi’s shoulder.

“Just a sec,” Karkat calls. “Pyrope? Can you spare a minute?”

Terezi turns. He slides his hands into his pockets.

“Mission debrief.” He jerks his head towards the compound proper. “My office.” 

“You’re joking,” Vriska says. “You’re joking. She’s clearly —”

“Fine,” Terezi insists. She pushes Vriska’s arm from her shoulder. “I’ll — of course, General.”

“Terezi,” Vriska begins, incredulous, and Terezi waves a hand.

“By your leave,” she says. She follows Karkat.

 

* * *

 

Karkat’s office is a threadbare, square room, paneled in pine wood and glass. Two fat leather chairs sit before the desk, which is covered with papers, databooks, and some old-schoolfeed journals, complete with real pens and everything; the husktop atop it is well-fed and glows.

Upon sitting down, Karkat picks up a databook and begins entering something on it. She eases herself into one of the chairs and rests her cane against the side. It is a terribly nice chair. She fights the temptation to nod off again.

To distract herself, she asks a question. “So,” she tosses out. “What’s an ideological revolution doing with royal money?” 

His eyes flit from the databook to her, and return to the book. “Surviving.”

“No, but I mean, how do you sell that? It’s got to be a marketing miracle. ‘Hey, much-put-upon lower castes, come help us stage a revolt, but don’t get too comfortable, because our endgame is another fuchsia princess on the throne!’ I’m just saying.”

“Most of them have met her,” Karkat says, and it’s the first time since she’s known him that he’s employed even a modicum of discretion. 

“How does that work?”

“When it was starting out,” he says, “she lived here. In HQ. That’s why everything’s so nice, if you hadn’t noticed.” He waves a hand around at the office. “She had drones build the whole complex. Invisibility field included. They did whatever she wanted — the Empress never pays much attention to how the Heiress manages things down planetside. Then she destroyed them, of course. Couldn’t have records of a construction project like this on Imperial registers.” 

“Smart.” 

“She is.” Karkat writes something on the databook with his stylus, crosses something out. His disposition remains unnervingly calm. “That’s why she has the mutie running things for her, instead of bothering to hang out on Death Planet herself.”

“And I imagine she makes the idea of a revolution more appealing to the blue-plus bracket of soldiers. I thought I caught a whiff of a seaddweller in the commons. Does my nose deceive me?”

“I don’t know what the fuck your nose does,” Karkat says, “but yeah, we’ve got seaddwellers. Not many. And to be honest, they’re probably more of a pain in the ass than they’re worth. They’re hardly here half a week before they start demanding their own commands, getting haughty because they’re sacrificing _so_ much for hemoegalitarianism. As if they’re not all here because they’re rejects, too.”

“Rejects?”

“Mutants,” he explains. “Or otherwise fit for the cull. We’ve got one, Pitrix Garber, his blood’s so cold it’s damn near pink. But his gillslits closed over when he was a wriggler, so he swims about as well as I do. All the posts for nobility post-Conscription involve a subaquatic lifestyle, so he got shafted, tossed to some backwater planet in the Sammak System. Showed up on my doorstep two sweeps ago with a whole cohort of midbloods and said he wouldn’t cause a fuss if we just didn’t narc. And then I was like, ‘Who the fuck do you think we’d be narcing to, you pan-dead squid-kisser, we’re a fucking hemoegalitarian rebellion.’ But he said he had contacts in the Fleet, so I figured, why the hell not. Worst case scenario, he’s a plant and we’ll have to move again.”

“Again?”

“We’ve had incidents,” Karkat says, and does not elaborate.

“Well, that solves my question about blood,” she says. “Teal and blue won’t be an issue, then.”

“No. I mean, some will give you some grief for it, but I’ve read you wrong if you’re the kind to get worked up over a little bit of grief.”

“Mm. Well spotted.” She steeples her fingers. “So your movement’s thesis is one of general anticasteism,” she stipulates, “as opposed to one of religious merit.” 

“The Signless was the most successful rebellion to date,” he says. “The name holds weight. For some reason, people figure that because I crawled out of his slurry, I can channel his spirit or something to lead us to glorious victory.”

“Do they all believe in it?” Terezi’s hand strays to her pendant. “The Signless-Sufferer stuff.”

“All of them? No.”

“Then why do they care about you?” It’s a bit rude, an unrefined question, but it appears he doesn’t mind. 

“Because of my blood,” Karkat says. He’s frank. At least he doesn’t harbor any delusions about his personal relevance. “It’s symbolic. Even if it’s not religious. It means something, I guess, to have someone from the bottom taking a swing at someone on top.” 

“Do you believe in symbols, General?”

He pushes back from the desk and sets down the databook, studying her over the top of his glasses.

“I believe the Empire is a pile of hoofbeast shit,” he says. “I believe the Empress is a grade-A nooklicker who’s had it coming for a long time now. I believe that none of us are going to get a damn thing done unless somebody with some aureii to blow takes an interest in our noble cause, and I believe that life under Peixes II has the potential to be a lot less shitty than life right now. And as long as I can get the skeptics around here to agree with most of that, I believe that we’ve got some infinitesimal fraction of half a chance.” 

“A moving sentiment.” She’s only partly shitting him. 

“You should come to Mass,” he says. “That’s when I really get worked up.” 

“You hold Mass?”

“For the religious types. It’s not mandatory, obviously. But some of them won’t let go of this idea that I’m the second coming of their Messiah, even though, duh —” He gestures to the red Sign printed into his breast pocket — “I’ve _got_ a sign, dumbfucks, you shits just decided to up and start wearing it, too.”

“I would contend that the Cult wore it first, actually. Given that your existence is a rather recent development, compared to theirs.”

He gives her a look that suggests this is not a good point of contention for her.

“However,” she says, “I understand your frustration! It is very comprehensible. Having never been the head of a religion, I can’t say I’ve ever experienced your particular problems, but I can sympathize. I have been responsible for the fate of many ill-organized trolls before.”

“Try doing it for thousands.” 

“No, thank you. I will leave that to you, Mr. Cherry Heretic.” 

“Mister what?”

“Sorry. _General_ Cherry Heretic.”

His face contorts in bemusement and impatience, but he says nothing, which she takes as a sign that his disposition is not generally unfavorable. 

“Lieutenant Maryam said you had thousands,” Terezi says, seizing on a subject change. “Is that true?”

“Probably, yeah. And we won’t know how many sympathizers we’ve got until we’re a little more notable, but for now, we’re trying to keep a low profile. Don’t publicize any of our missions as our own. You probably heard of the destruction of the _Carnivore,_ a couple perigees ago?”

A ship of bureaucretins, on a diplomatic mission to the Marjor system, had gone missing without cause. It carried with it several members of the Empress’ most esteemed ranks, and speculation about its disappearance had plagued tabloids for weeks. 

“That was you?”

“Our Marjorian branch, yeah. Sollux headed that one, he hasn’t shut up about it since. ‘Call me when you take down an Imperial thtar cruither, KK.’ ‘When was the latht time you did thomething that big, KK.’ If he sucked his own bulge any harder he’d choke himself.” 

Terezi coughs violently to hide her reaction. “You know the Spymaster,” she says.

“‘Thpymathter.’ Is that what he’s calling himself, now?” Karkat smirks. “I was trolling that asshole since before he could code his way through ‘Hello, world.’ Yeah, I know him.”

“Ah.” She stores the information away, unsure of what to do with it. “Congratulations on the _Carnivore,_ I suppose.” 

Three people from Terezi’s cohort at the Academy had been aboard the _Carnivore_ when it vanished. There had been an official Bar funeral held for them, despite the lack of bodies. She hadn’t mourned them herself — they hadn’t been friends, or ever done more than exchange brief words of greeting in the hallway — but she had sent her condolences to their moirails and matesprits, as well as a set of luxurious gift baskets. They were not the first of their cohort to die in the line of duty, but they were the first of their cohort whose killer Terezi had ever addressed face-to-face. 

She does not share this information.

“Yeah, well. Small victories.” He sets down the databook. “I did bring you in here for a reason.” 

“I assume you did. The admittedly great pleasure of my company alone seems insufficient justification for one as important as yourself.”

He steeples his fingers and regards the desk, as though, for once, carefully selecting his words. She waits. The silence stretches.

“Did you know Kivyes?”

She startles. “No,” she says. “I just met him tonight.”

“Did he demonstrate any suicidal tendencies? Any overwhelming martyr instinct?” 

“I didn’t get to know him. He might have.”

“Does that seem likely?”

“I don’t know what seems likely. Again, I didn’t know him.”

“Stop sidestepping,” he bites out. “He’s dead. He died helping you, and I want to know why. I didn’t tell him to, and I don’t know him all that well, but I haven’t met that many people predisposed to die for a stranger.”

“He made a sacrifice. I didn’t ask him to.” 

“I know you didn’t ask him to. But I figured, since you were the one he made it for, you’d have some inkling as to why.” 

“I don’t,” she says shortly. “If you want the answer to that question, I would recommend cross-examining a necromancer. Leave me out of it.”

He kisses his teeth. “All right,” he says. “Maybe you can answer this one. Why did Serket look like she was going to pass out on the floor of the lift?”

“Her moirail was in the process of falling to her death. I can only offer conjecture, but most trolls carry some degree of affection for their moirail.” 

“Don’t give me lip. She was dead fucking silent. She wasn’t even looking at you.”

“I’m sure she’d be flattered to know you paid her such attention.”

“Why do you think she was doing that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t.”

“Does the room have an echo?”

Karkat radiates displeasure. “I don’t fuck around,” he says. “I don’t like playing word games with people, and I get that I’m talking to the worst possible person if that’s what I’m after, but I — being an incredible fucking optimist — think you’re at least capable of giving me a straight answer. So I’m going to ask you, once, and regardless of what you say, I’m going to take your answer at face value. And if at _any_ later date I find out you lied to me, I will throw you and your pet pirate to the drones personally.”

It’s an intriguing threat. Terezi briefly reevaluates her opinion of Karkat’s intelligence.

“That being said: What the fuck is going on with her? Because I’ve met a couple of pieces of work, a couple of really intricate clusterfucks of personalities, don’t get me wrong — but Serket is the first troll I’ve met who’s made me feel legitimately grateful for having known a period in my life where I was unaware of her existence.”

She takes a deep breath.

“You have your terms,” she says, “I have mine. I want this entire conversation held under the highest threshold of hypothetical. I will testify to nothing regarding Vriska’s actions over the past twenty-four hours, and I will not confirm any accusations, grounded or otherwise. If you bring this up with anyone outside this room, I will deny it vehemently, denounce you, and call you a liar. I _will_ know if you break any of those terms. Do we have an accord?”

“Fine,” he says immediately. “Granted. Trap: shut. You got it.”

Terezi crosses her legs and leans back in her chair, organizing herself as casually as she can. She never had tremendous skill in posturing. It was among her few shortcomings as a diplomat.

“Vriska,” she begins, neutrally, “is the descendant of the Marquise Spinneret Mindfang and the Summoner. Mindfang, as you may recall, was a very famous telepath.” 

“I don’t recall that, no. What do you mean, telepath?” 

“I mean she had psychic talents. Particularly in the field of cognitive activity. It’s not dissimilar to abilities possessed by psionic lowbloods.” 

“But she was a blueblood.” 

“Yes. She was a mutant, to my understanding.” Terezi laces her fingers over her cane’s head. “Vriska inherited some of her gifts.”

“She can fuck with people’s _minds?”_ Karkat sounds well and truly horrified. His reaction is, to his credit, not unreasonable.

“She elects not to, under most circumstances,” Terezi assures him, increasingly aware that if she were in his position, she would have little incentive to believe herself. “It’s also limited to those under the blue bracket. Her powers are weak where highbloods are concerned.”

“Oh. Oh. That’s good to hear. Good thing there aren’t any lowbloods in my fucking _hemoegalitarian revolt.”_

“Complete control takes immense concentration and more or less incapacitates her to any other activity. It is patently obvious and, consequently, she does not often try.”

“You realize, of course,” Karkat says, his voice soaring up into nigh-painful pitches, “that there’s absolutely no way to verify that. None! She could tell you her powers only work at three o’clock on Tuesday afternoons when she’s had a cup of tea and you’d have to take her fucking word on it.”

“Not really,” Terezi says, icy. “We have found ourselves in situations where it would befit her to use those powers in which her limitations have made themselves apparent.”

“Which I’ll have to take your word on, I suppose.” 

“If you’re not going to believe anything I say,” Terezi says tersely, “I would inquire as to why you bother asking me questions at all.”

That quiets him for a moment, which he spends emoting with furious vigor. After gathering what little composure he had to begin with, he folds his hands on the desk and says, “How does a member of the Cruelest Bar end up tied to a gamblignant, anyway?”

“How much time do you have?”

“Give me the schoolfeed version.” 

“The Mirthful Church and I had a disagreement about the degree of separation necessary and or proper between its order and the legislacerative sect. Vriska Serket happened to be the subject of that disagreement.” 

“Give me a schoolfeed version that actually makes sense.”

“They were going to kill her,” Terezi says. “I decided that was inappropriate and intervened.”

Karkat snorts. “Okay. Revised question: why are you here?”

“What are the parameters of ‘here’? Alternia? Your compound? Your office?” 

“The movement, dipshit. What are you doing planetside? God knows there are safer places for you to be.” 

A featherbeast flits past Karkat’s window. A streak of blue-grey against black. 

“The Heiress sent us here in exchange for protection.”

He drums his fingers on the desk. “Great,” he says. “Why?”

“She referred to it as a management position.”

“Managing what? Us? Are you here for a job, as an envoy, a soldier, what?”

“I think she was perhaps looking for a way to neutralize us,” Terezi suggests. “Vriska is —”

“Volatile.” 

“Problematic.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“That’s my way of putting it.” 

“If she’s anything like her ancestor, she’s got telepathic powers, god tier luck, and the conscience of a mad cholerbear.” 

“I prefer to think of it as a creative talent for destruction.” 

“That’s a line out of PR.” Karkat massages his temples. “So — to summarize — Peixes gets a whiff of Mindfang, the Sequel, hears that half the Empire’s tearing itself apart looking for her, and figures, uh, you know what? Let’s just lob this _gem_ of a person into the middle of the war effort. That’s great. Spectacular tactical thinking. I am absolutely fucking delighted to serve in this woman’s militia.” 

Terezi purses her lips and decides not to mention that Feferi, in the strictest sense, had probably not wanted Vriska there. It seems the wrong moment. 

“There’s a way to make use of her talents,” she says instead. “She’s the descendent of a famous revolutionary. And she’s not a bad captain.”

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t have her court-martialed and sentenced for murder.” 

Terezi turns and fixes her eyes on him. To his credit, he doesn’t flinch, but he does stare, especially when she peers over the rims of her glasses.

“Because you know she’s more useful alive than dead,” she says, with a dangerous airiness. “And because I won’t let you.”

“You won’t _let_ me?”

She leans over the desk. “I defended that troll,” she informs him, quietly, “before a court of subjugglators. Before a judge of the same. Against a prosecutorial team of the same. Before an audience of the same. With a list of charges taller than you are. I _won_ that trial. And you want to martial her for — what, trollslaughter? Assisted suicide? On the theory that this _blueblood_ troll used her _mind control_ powers to make your soldier jump out of the lift, cut me free, after which he was killed by the massive eldritch horror that was trying to kill us anyway? 

“You need to demonstrate intent, method, and motive to win a murder charge,” she says, lifting three fingers. “You’re one for three, in the most charitable of estimates. Your only evidence is eyewitness testimony — none of whom can confirm your theory — and the word of the troll _defending_ her that she’s capable of it.”

She straightens and folds her hands over her cane. “Not that you could even call upon me to testify,” she adds, “seeing as I’m her moirail, and, accordingly, cannot be made to give potentially incriminating testimony under the Act to Clarify Quadrant Privilege of 8885, Section 2.”

His eyes are narrow. 

“Not an impossible case,” she says amicably. “I’ve won with less. But you’d need a better lawyer than me to beat _me_ with it, and I’ve been reliably informed that one doesn’t exist.”

She lays down the challenge and waits. She becomes aware that she is enjoying herself, and tries to stop. 

Karkat grinds his teeth and sits back in his chair. The twin slits of his pupils settle on her unblinkingly. The bright red of his irises unnerves her. Its pungency comes across as artificial, unnatural, impossible. 

“You two are in the pale?” 

She almost flinches. She does not — the easily surprised do not flourish in the legislacerative business — but it’s a near thing. “Yes,” she says delicately. “We haven’t had time to register it legally. I hope that’s acceptable.” 

“I’m not trying to nose my way into your business. I couldn’t give less of a shit about your business. The amount of shits I give about your business is a number so low scienstiffs are inventing a new theoretical field of math to study it as we speak. That’s how little I care! All I want to know is whether anyone’s got her under control.” 

“She’s not my trained barkbeast.”

“No — debatable — but more importantly, she’s a fucking liability, and I want to make sure someone’s locked in diamonds with her. I figured you two were probably — fuck, I don’t know, _something,_ based on — whatever, but I didn’t know. Someone needs to be responsible for keeping a lid on her.” 

Terezi flexes her fingers on her cane. “I’m her moirail,” she says. “I’ll vouch for her.” 

“Yeah?” Karkat leans forward. “Because I don’t put up with bullshit. I have a lot of it, in this shitstorm of a revolution, and I’m not fucking keen on handling more. I don’t care whose bucket she pupated out of, I don’t have time for unnecessary fucking risks.” 

“I’ll vouch for her.” 

“You know what that means, right? You know that means if she gets in some shit, I’m going to hold your ass responsible for cleaning it up?” 

“An official recognition of a preexisting unofficial duty,” Terezi says, and smiles. She’s offered this smile on many an occasion, usually to a hostile juroreaper in the event that they’ve elected to be an antagonistic ass. 

He grunts. “Sure,” he says. “Fine. Whatever. As long as it’s not in my hands, I couldn’t be more fucking jolly.” 

“Yessir.” She snaps off a lazy salute. He glares at her, and she lowers her hand, smile unflagging. When he lowers his eyes to his paperwork, she assumes herself to be dismissed, and gingerly gets up.

“And another thing,” he says, pointing his databook stylus at her with irritable righteousness. “You tell her that if she pulls the mind-control bullshit on one of my people again, I’m pushing her ass into that eldritch fucker’s mouth and hightailing it. Somebody died tonight because you were clumsy and your moirail was selfish. Next time I’m not giving her the benefit of the doubt.”

Terezi tilts her head and summons a tone of mild indulgence.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says.

He exhales, shaking his head, and lowers his eyes to the databook. “Get the fuck out of my office,” he says, with an tetchy jerk of his head. She takes her leave immediately.

 

* * *

 

Vriska is sitting on the edge of the recuperacoon when Terezi gets back to their block. She’s shed the coat and her overshirt, leaving a grey undersuit and a bulletproof vest made of the same stuff as Terezi’s chitin. Her holster hangs over the chair in the corner. The blinds have been drawn, under which slivers of brilliant scarlet light creep with long, arching fingers.

Her head snaps up when Terezi slides the door closed. Her mouth opens, like a word sits in wait on her tongue, but she releases a quiet exhale instead and closes it. 

“Hi,” Terezi says. She sets down her cane and begins to undress. Jacket, overshirt, undershirt, pants. She strips with businesslike precision. It’s not the kind of display that evokes romance, but she’s tired and she doesn’t give a damn.

“Hi.”

“You been sitting there since we got back?”

“I met up with Aradia. Debriefed. Told her I’d fucked up.” 

“Was she shocked? I bet she was shocked.”

The jab doesn’t land well. Vriska winces, says nothing. 

“The defense has the burden of rejoinder,” Terezi says lightly, attempting to lift the mood. “C’mon. The judge will even grant the defendant one free blind joke! Make it good.” 

When Vriska’s brow knits in confusion, she decides that legal humor may not be the best of all avenues. 

“Never mind.” 

She goes into the ablutionblock and brushes her fangs. When she comes back, Vriska is in the same position, arms folded. Terezi removes her glasses, folds them, and sets them on the table.

“Why him?” 

A slim crack runs along the left lens. 

“What do you mean?”

“Why did you send him, instead of going yourself? Did you know he was going to die?”

“Of course not.” Vriska rubs a hand over her mouth. “When you — when it got you, I had taken my harness off, already. He still had his on. It would’ve taken me longer to put it on and go after you than you had left, and he was smaller than me. He fell faster.” Belatedly, she says, “I would’ve gone, if I could have.”

Terezi nods. “I was wondering,” she says. It falls flat and redundant between them.

“I would have.”

“I believe you. Did I say I didn’t?”

Bracing herself, she slings a leg over the edge of the recuperacoon and wades into the slime. It’s cool and stale, probably having sat for perigees without use. She waits for her legs to adjust, and then lowers the rest of her body, resting her head on the back of the cupe.

“We should talk,” Vriska says.

“Yes.” Terezi plugs her nose and dunks her head, surfacing with sopor clinging to her head. It settles a layer of cotton over her thoughts. “But not today.”

“I have some shit to get off my chest.” Vriska’s eyes are hollow at the edges, like she aged sweeps between now and when Terezi smelled her last. 

“All right.”

Neither of them say anything. 

“We never really talked about what it meant,” Terezi says, “to be moirails.”

“No.” 

“Mm.” She wants to sleep. She wants to forget the feeling of free-fall, and she wants Vriska to hold her for a while, until both of those things happen. 

“You said, once,” Vriska says, “that we were hardly moirail material, either of us.”

“I did.” 

“Maybe we’re not.” 

Terezi pushes herself further out of the slime. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Good.” She runs a hand over her face. “Okay,” she says. “Okay, a couple of things are going to happen. First: I am going to go to sleep. I have done a lot of things tonight, several of which probably have caused me some degree of trauma, and from which I am probably in some state of shock. Second: you are going to go to sleep with me, and you are going to use this recuperacoon, because I am not going to let you sleep anywhere else. Third: you and I will talk about things, after I have had enough sleep to give you a coherent response. And that’s that.” She reaches out and grabs Vriska’s hand, the slime on hers staining Vriska’s undershirt.

“I thought,” Vriska says, “I thought you might want me — uh, I thought you might not —”

“Did you think _I_ was going to break up with you?”

Vriska shrugs aggressively. “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know! I, like — I killed a guy. I know you know I — we’ve killed people, before, but there’s an argument — from a socratic standpoint — that he didn’t need to die. And you don’t like waste.”

There is something small and wounded and wretched in Vriska, under the meat of her, under the bones of her. For a moment Terezi feels that if she touched Vriska’s chest, her hand would break right through the skin. The suspicion seizes her bloodpusher.

“I think you should come to the cupe,” she says. 

“I need to know,” Vriska insists. “I want to know if you’re — if you feel like —”

“Vriska,” Terezi says, and it sounds more like pleading than she meant it. She is deflecting and she knows she is and she knows it’s cruel, and so she rips a page from Vriska’s book and stubbornly does not care. “Please?”

Vriska’s mouth tightens, frowning, but she concedes. She slides into the recuperacoon and settles herself in. The cupe isn’t so big as to tolerate the both of them. Terezi folds herself around Vriska’s arm and closes her eyes, evening her breaths as if she has slipped under immediately. After a time, the tension in Vriska uncoils, and her limbs float with an easiness that evinces sleep. 

She summons the image of Kivyes plunging into the waves, his screams ricocheting around in her helmet, in her head. She remembers his sign, three concentric circles, and practices tracing it with her finger on her forearm. She needs to remember it, to report his death. Would it count as a casualty of necessity? Vriska isn’t a legislacerator. Nor is it clear, exactly, that Kivyes’ death was borne of self-defense.

_One charge of murder, second degree. Possibly voluntary trollslaughter; insufficient case law to say._

There should be an ember at the back of her thinkpan putting pressure on that point, demanding thought, urging her fingers toward the noose. She has enough evidence to convict. She nursed that ember through the Academy, through six sweeps of perfectly executed legislacerative duty, through the hardest case of her career. It survived hours of studying ancient texts and flawless recitation of statues, case law, memorization of precedents, unspoken codes of conduct, of battle training. She wonders now, probing at the place where it should be, where it had gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _But our love was a song sung by a dying swan_  
>  _And in the night, you hear me calling_  
>  _You hear me calling_  
>  _And in your dreams, you see me falling_  
>  —Troll M83 feat. Troll Susanne Sundfør, _Oblivion_


	14. The Law of Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“Before the Empire forcibly introduced standard codes of conduct for its citizenry and standardized the punishments for breaking them, there existed a prior, simpler set of behavioral codes for trollkind. These ideas were not codified in text, but understood to be nevertheless binding by virtue of social norm; in addition, they were often simplistic, as the laws of early societies tend to be. Examples include the Law of Heathens, a particular rule developed by early branches of the Mirthful Church, which gave the faithful express permission to cull those not in accordance with its principles; that was later built into the legal structure with the Most Mirthful and Delightful Union of Powers Act of 6723. Alternatively, the Law of Blood was developed by the common people, and had no legal corollary; it held that all trolls, should they be wronged, have the right to blood vengeance.”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

Terezi wakes to a suffocating warmth. Vriska has curled around her like a suckerfish. An arm winds itself around her waist and the other drifts into her hair and Terezi’s ankle lies slotted between Vriska’s two and it takes her a moment to sort out whose limbs are whose and where. The room is still dark, outside the sopor. They must not have received a wakeup call. Perhaps Karkat decided to give them a break.

She twists. The slime slows her brain. Her thoughts coagulate in a messy snarl of pity and soft sentiment, and the presence of such a toothless feeling floating around in her thinkpan startles her into consciousness. With it returns a few rather unpleasant points of logic, which nevertheless propel her up and out of the slime.

When she breaks the surface, it’s like breathing arctic air after a stroll through a volcanic planet. She huffs to warm up her lungs, and then, bracing herself on the edge of the cupe, hauls herself out. Vriska startles to life beside her, eyes snapping open under the slime, and she sits up, too, wiping green film from her face.

Terezi sits on the edge of the recuperacoon. Vriska remains in the slime from her shoulders-down.

“Evening,” Terezi says, at length.

“Evening.”

“Sleep well?”

“Well enough.” Vriska combs her hair out of her face. “What time is it?”

“Around nine, nine-thirty, by my guess.” 

“I haven’t slept this late in sweeps.”

“I haven’t slept this late ever.” Terezi reaches for her glasses on the cupeside table and tosses Vriska hers. “It feels perverse.”

“You want bitter bean fluid?”

“Please.” 

“Cool.” Vriska staggers out of the cupe, wringing out her hair. “I’ll put on a pot. Can’t promise anything as concerns quality, but it’ll be caffeinated, and that’s what matters, innit.”

“The coffeemaker on the _Pyrexia_ didn’t spit a single palatable cup of bean fluid in all the sweeps it lived there. As long as yours doesn’t actually poison me, I’ll abide it.”

Vriska snorts, and bends to pick up her shirt. Terezi watches, and the moment stagnates. She moves with awkward, stilted haste. The easy comfort of the recuperacoon has vanished. 

“We should talk,” she says. Vriska blanches like a troll watching her own noose being strung, but she nods, and pulls on her shirt. Terezi flicks a switch on the control panel and the cupe begins refilling. She pads into the ablutionblock while Vriska is puttering around looking for her clothes.

The ablution trap runs hot enough to scald. She washes quickly, scraping leftover debris and congealed sweat off from her skin alongside old slime. Her hair has tangled into greasy clumps sealed with seawater, which she yanks out unceremoniously. The pendant of the Signless-Sufferer goes on under her clothes. She debates wearing it outside — no one would blink to see it here, of all places — but instinct compels her to hide it. It would give Karkat too much satisfaction, anyway.

When she leaves the ablutiontrap, a great cloud of steam billowing from the room behind her, Vriska sidles past her without saying a word. The room is cold in comparison to the warmth of the trap. A new set of clothes has appeared for her during the day: a suit like the trolls’ on the speedlift, black cargo pants, a white shirt, and layers of chitin to replace her old armor. To the side, however, sits the addition of a silken teal jacket, not unlike a legislacerator’s, but fashioned as if by someone who had only ever seen legislacerative fashion from a distance and without understanding of its significance. The high cut of the hem makes it look more akin to a Neophyte’s uniform than Terezi’s. Terezi puts it on anyway.

With her cane and her glasses, she feels more like herself. Wonders can be said for a good outfit.

Vriska comes out of the ablutionblock fiddling with her cufflinks. “Dinner,” she suggests. “Then, uh. Whatever you want.”

“Dinner sounds good.” Terezi thumbs open the door to the respiteblock, relieved of the diversion.

Aradia left already, at some point earlier in the evening. The door to her respiteblock hangs open, revealing a spartan interior, hardly a single belonging left in the open. She has cleaned up the pillow pile in her own room, which Terezi has neglected to do. It embarrasses her, and she closes Aradia’s door for her. 

Vriska sets on a pot of bitter bean fluid and takes out a jug of moobeast lactose. “Milk?”

“Black.” 

A joke about the aristocratic term Vriska used — _milk_ , what is she, violetblood — hovers on the tip of Terezi’s tongue. Vriska opens her mouth, one end curling up, and she cuts herself off; probably a quadrant joke about Terezi’s choice of words, unvoiced. They don’t say anything else.

She hands Terezi a mug of bean fluid and pours one for herself. Terezi pads over to the cushioned platform in the common area and sits down on one edge of it, marking out her territory. It is also the seat closest to the door. This is a legislacerative technique. It was not a conscious choice, but Terezi notices it, all the same.

Vriska doctors her bean fluid with more sugar and lactose than can possibly be healthy, and then comes over to sit on the other side of the cushioning platform. Terezi finds herself analyzing the choice before she can stop herself, and redirects her attention.

“Why don’t you start,” Terezi says. “You said you had something to get off your chest.”

“I dunno. Having slept on it, I feel kind of differently now.” Vriska buries her nose in her mug and takes a sip, probably slow on purpose. 

“Okay.”

“Do you want to . . . say anything?”

“Quite frankly,” says Terezi, “did I not know that it would be terribly unhealthy for both of us, I would prefer not to have this conversation at all.”

“Health is overrated.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she says. “I’ve been told it’s worth it.” 

That gets a snort. 

“Here are the facts,” Terezi says. She sees the outline of a case structure itself in her head. Facts, arguments, precedents, verdict. Linear. Clean. “I cut off my harness. This left me unprepared for the event that Gl’bgolyb returned to continue her assault on the speedlift, which she did. As a consequence, I was knocked free from the netting, and entered free-fall at approximately four hundred feet above sea level. From my calculations — and I am not mathemaimtician — I would have hit the sea at ninety-four percent of terminal velocity. That would almost certainly have killed me. Kivyes leapt from the speedlift and caught me before that could happen. In the process, he was caught himself, and was pulled down. This killed him.” She wraps both hands around her mug. “This is not a fact, but it is evident: you made him do it.” 

Vriska nods. 

Terezi breathes deeply. “All right,” she says. “More facts: I have informed General Vantas that if he moves to try you for it, I will not only run circles around his attempts, but thoroughly embarrass him in the process. And I have vouched for your place here in front of him. This is in part because his case would be a ridiculous one, and it would be noxious to any who hold dear the concept of the law.”

“I didn’t realize he knew I could . . . or that that was what happened.” 

“He suspected something of you. I told him the truth, and told him not to tell anyone else. I think he’ll keep his word.”

Vriska exhales through her fangs. “I don’t trust him.”

“I trust mutual interest,” Terezi says. “He has an interest in not revealing that he harbored a dangerous party, and you have an interest in not being revealed for a dangerous party. If you had to _trust_ someone to make bargains, Contract Law would be in shambles.”

“That’s fine, I guess. I’ll take your word for it.”

“Although he would like you not to do it again. That’s understandable, I think, and we can both agree that his instinct there is a good one. Perhaps you could express to him, as succinctly as you find appropriate, your appreciation for his leniency, and an assurance that you will not be offering a repeat performance in the future . . . ?”

Vriska’s mouth twists, a flat, unhappy line. Terezi presses, “I think that’s reasonable, don’t you? And it might be a step in —”

“I can’t,” Vriska says shortly.

“Whatever irrational hang-ups you have regarding him, I can promise they’re less important than being on his good side.”

“I can’t promise _that,”_ she insists. “I can’t say I won’t — do _that_ — again. Like, getting onto the speedlift, I didn’t figure I’d be killing a guy that night, but that’s what happened, and if the same situation came up tonight — I would, again. Even knowing what happens.”

“Do you not feel —”

“Of _course_ I feel bad about it!” Vriska puts down her mug with force. Liquid sloshes over the rim. “You think I wanted him to die? I didn’t have time to think! I did what was necessary, and I’d do it again.” 

“Necessary.”

“Yes, necessary. You were — you’re more important than the guy, anyway! Vantas would have made the same decision, if he had a choice between the pair of you, he just would’ve taken so fucking long making it that you would’ve been long gone! I did what — I did what anyone would do, if they thought about it hard enough.”

“It wasn’t a choice between me and him,” Terezi points out. “You made it a choice when you added him to the equation.”

“Of course it was a choice. I had an option and I took it. Simple.” Vriska retreats into loud defiance, defensive. 

“I’m not blaming you.”

“Sure as fuck sounds like it!”

“Well, I’m not.” 

Vriska stands up and paces. “It was necessary,” she repeats. “I feel bad about it, fuck, of course I do, it’s not like I feel great, being the reason somebody got killed, but I’m not going to say it was a bad decision, and I won’t say I wouldn’t do it again. I won’t lie. I mean, would you have _preferred_ to die?”

“No. Obviously.”

“There you go! Fucking — you’re welcome!”

“This isn’t about _me!”_ Terezi sets down her mug. “You didn’t do it for _me!_ It wasn’t because you thought I was more important than Kivyes, it was because you didn’t want me to die!”

“So fucking sue me! Is that your problem?”

“My problem is that I need to trust you!”

Terezi stands up and swings her cane around to point at Vriska. “I need to trust you,” she repeats. “You are my moirail! You are also, save maybe a handful of people, my only friend. We are in the middle of an anticasteist rebellion on a planet known for its brutal caste system at the behest of a chimerical member of the peerage. I do not trust a single person on this compound, except maybe Aradia, and I need to be able to trust you.”

“Of course you can.” Vriska looks as though Terezi shoved a blade in her back. “I had your back, last night, didn’t I?”

“You can’t go around killing people. It’s a non-starter! It’s more than trusting you to protect me. It’s a matter of trusting you to act responsibly and not do things like _this._ ”

“I thought we established that I made the right choice.” 

“No! We haven’t established that, for one thing, and — _I cannot make that call!_ You are asking me to validate a decision that prevented my death, of _course_ I’m going to take your side!”

“Maybe it’s because I’m fucking right!”

“It’s like talking to a brick wall,” Terezi snaps, threading her fingers through her hair. “To a brick fucking wall. Oh my God. Okay. Let’s try something different, yes? Let’s try something else.” 

She sits back down and leans forward on her knees. “Point one,” she says. “We have established that as your moirail and the beneficiary of your decision, I am not an apt moral judge on this particular case. Point two: this does not mean that the choice you made, if applied to a general _trend_ of behavior, would still be correct.” 

Vriska scowls but nods. Whether it is a gesture of agreement or merely to indicate that she’s following, it’s unclear.

“Point three: I would like you to promise me,” she says, slowly, “that if, in the future, such a choice presents itself, you will at least consult me before making it.”

“What about in situations like that one,” Vriska demands. “What if there isn’t time to sit down and have a fucking symposium?”

“I don’t know,” Terezi says, tired. “I don’t know! I do not know how to feel about this and it is excruciating. The law would indicate that you should not have done what you did. As its executor, I feel compelled to remind you of the same. As your moirail, however, my feelings on the subject are different.” 

Vriska rubs her jaw. She’s not wearing her overcoat, and without the silhouette, her shape is foreign, smaller. 

Terezi presses a hand to the side of her mug. It’s cooled to the point of unpalatability, and she takes it to the sink, where she summarily dumps it out. It gurgles as it runs down the drain.

She takes a deep breath. “Do you want to know how I became blind?” 

Vriska turns her head. “Gift from the Handmaid,” she says, “wasn’t it?”

Terezi returns to the cushioned platform and sits on the edge of it. “If you mean that I was born blind,” she says, “then no. That was a misdirection on my part.” 

“You don’t have to —”

“Do you want to know?”

“Yes,” Vriska says candidly.

Terezi folds her legs on the couch and balances her cane across them, delicately, carefully. “When I was six,” she says, “I played FLARP. As an outlet to execute justice, it does not serve particularly well; I used it more as practice for legislacerative duty than amusement. It also happened to be one of a few avenues of contact with other people available to a troll living in a treehouse in the middle of nowhere, and, incidentally, one of the least healthy.” 

She waits for Vriska to make a crack at this. That she does not indicates an unexpected somberness. Terezi clears her throat. 

“I was very good! My name never graced the leaderboards, but I didn’t die, either, so that distinguishes me from the bottom third of FLARPers, at least. Nobody wanted to play with me, though. That’s understandable. My principled approach to killing went against the general spirit of the game; one would be ill-advised to pick a partner who could not be depended upon to consistently kill other players.

“The campaign had been going for three nights. I was chasing a troll from a different team, on my own. Refer to the aforementioned lack of teammates to ask for help. I should mention that I was somewhat inept at tracking, seeing I had little experience to draw upon. It took me three nights to find where they were hiding, and getting close enough to kill them took another two after that. My talents for the cruelest art are not prodigious.”

Vriska sits down on the other end of the sofa. Terezi constructs her next sentences with care.

“I killed them,” she says. “They hardly put up a fight. It took me all of ten minutes. I was very satisfied with myself, of course, because I was much more willing to believe myself a prodigious swordswoman than that my opponent had been unskilled and unprepared. A few nights pass, and I almost forget about it. Then, it turns out, they had a matesprit. I know that because a week later, that matesprit came after me with a dozen of their allies and tried to burn my hive to the ground.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I survived,” Terezi deadpans. “Don’t worry. And my hive survived it, too, which was a miracle, in retrospect; they were unscrupulous with the kerosene. It was the Dark Season, and raining, because they were not particularly good at scheduling their angry mobs around meteorological trends. But gas fires burn even under water. By the time I escaped the fire, the sun was coming up.” She blinks, an old instinct reemerging. “The burns were grotesque, from what I hear. I bathed in sopor for a perigee straight and I walked with a limp for perigees after that. It took sweeps for my hair to grow back.”

Vriska winces in sympathy.

“After Conscription,” Terezi says, “my first molt came, and it shed most of the dead dermis. Lucky for me, I was still young when it happened! But that was the least of it.”

She takes off her glasses and opens her eyes. “This,” she says, “is what it looks like when a troll’s pupils scar over. Incidentally, very few trolls have ever seen it, as that degree of injury usually serves as a culling sentence. Consider yourself lucky.”

Vriska examines them with interest. Terezi’s face itches from the attention.

“Supposedly, they are hideous to behold,” she says. She is quiet. Vriska is close enough to hear her if she whispered. “I will have to take that on faith. I’ve never actually beheld them myself, you see.” She moves to put her glasses back on.

Vriska grabs her wrist. Terezi pauses.

“They’re cool as shit,” she offers. 

Something numb-icy-hot contorts in the pit of Terezi’s stomach. “Little can be said for your taste, Captain Serket,” she says. “But thank you.”

“Yeah.” Vriska releases her. Terezi hesitates, turning the glasses over in her hands, and then slides them on.

“You are not the only one who has ever made a bad call,” she says. “Do you know something? I cannot remember why I killed that troll.” Her claws bite the meat of her palm. “I know I was mad about something. I suspect I had a reason. Probably a good reason. But I don’t know what it was. Whether they killed someone else that I was fond of, or cheated, or stole. That day was the most excruciating pain of my life and I can’t remember why it happened in the first place.” 

“What happened to the matesprit?”

Terezi cocks her head.

Vriska repeats, “What happened to the matesprit?”

“I don’t know. They left me for dead, once the sun came up.” 

“Do you remember their symbol?”

“No.”

“S’ a shame. We could’ve tracked them down.”

“I have no interest in finding them again. I don’t want vengeance from them, anyway. It was my own fault for starting a fight I did not know I could finish.” She touches the rims of her glasses. “It was a lesson well learned.”

“It was a shit thing to do to a troll,” Vriska says. 

“Yes. It can be both.” 

“Would you still have done it, if you knew?”

“That’s a difficult question.”

Vriska shrugs. There is a hunger in her eyes for the answer, for _an_ answer, for a slavish breed of validation. 

“The law would say yes,” Terezi says neutrally.

“That’s a cop-out.”

“Not for a legislacerator.”

“Not to be rude,” Vriska says curtly, “but yeah, even for you. You’re not a legislacerator before you’re a troll, or whatever that bullshit was. You’re allowed to think for your fucking self.”

“In a refined sense. To answer your question: I do not regret it, if only because I think I am happier now than I was when I could see. My world is, at least, more interesting.” 

“Right.” Vriska’s eagerness fades away. Whatever answer she wanted, she didn’t get it, and it puzzles Terezi. 

“However,” she says, “I was not a legislacerator when I did it. So I suppose the question is distinct in that sense.” A beat passes. “I did believe he deserved it. But then, his matesprit doubtlessly thought that I deserved it.”

Then: “I am beginning to think that the law is wrong about some things.” 

The words wedge themselves sidelong in her head like a databook crammed onto the wrong shelf, a peg shoved into the wrong slot. The back of her thinkpan revolts against this chief of all heresies, this vocalization of disobedience. She spent sweeps of her life culling trolls for saying the same. Even now, her fingers itch, although what she could do except put the blade to her own throat and pull, she does not know. 

“I could’ve told you that,” Vriska snorts, with such normalcy, such casual _yes, of course,_ embedded in her nonchalance that Terezi is reaching for her before she knows what she’s doing. Surprised, Vriska opens her arms and lets her press in at her side, settling one hand on the swell of Terezi’s hip. 

“You once said that I’d run my best friend through with a sword if I thought they broke the law. And I wouldn’t lose a day’s sleep over it.” 

Vriska winces. “Yeah,” she says. “To be fair, I didn’t know you, then.”

“You were right. Then.” Terezi shifts to avoid jabbing her shoulder into Vriska’s side. “The law calls for me to do that. It shouldn’t . . . I wouldn’t have had to try you, if we were moirails. But if push came to shove, I would have been expected to do what justice demanded.” 

“Killing me?”

“Yes. I was deluding myself, I think, when I said you deserved — that there was any legal demand for your freedom. You were guilty. I knew the punishment. At first, I was merely unwilling to believe that the Magistragedy could be wrong, that the Bar could be. And then, later, I merely did not want you to die. I am very good at rationalizing things. But that does not change the law.”

“You wouldn’t run me through now.” It is not a question. That it is not a question knocks Terezi off her guard. 

“I’d like to think not.” 

“No, you wouldn’t. I’m still breathing, dumbass.” Vriska smiles, all lop-sided and clever. 

“Correlation and causation, my dear.”

“Nah. If you wanted me gone, really, I wouldn’t be long for this universe. You’re a deadly ass bitch.”

Terezi pokes her. “Stop it,” she says. It comes out more seriously than she means it.

Vriska seems to notice this, and frowns. “I mean it.”

“I’m sure you do.”

She sucks in a breath and speaks all at once, as if flinging the truth out before she thinks better of it. “The night you decide to kill me, Pyrope,” she says, “is the night I die. That’s the truth of it. Not just because I’ve never met a troll I’d put money on on against you, even myself — although I might give you a run for it, maybe. It’s irrelevant, anyway, because fact is, you could pull out your sword right now and all I’d do is ask how you want to do it.” 

It is the most breathtakingly pale thing that Terezi has ever heard in her life, and although she would like to say its morbidity does not add to its appeal, she would be lying. It overwhelms her, and so she buries her face in her arms and does not look up until she is confident that she has not, in fact, turned blue from embarrassment.

“You are very dumb,” she says. “And deliberately obtuse. You don’t get to die, dummy. Least of all because of me.”

“I don’t _get_ to.”

“No.” Terezi burrows into her side.

“That’s why,” Vriska says patiently. “I wouldn’t wax pale for someone who wanted to kill me.”

“Your sense of self-preservation is nowhere near credible enough to make that claim. And that is besides the point! I would not let you open your horribly maudlin arteries, even if you tried.”

“I am not _maudlin.”_

“You are. You learned how to moirail from the Howlmark Channel and it is as obvious as it is endearing.” 

“What, like you’re some pale stud.”

“I got you into the slime within a fortnight of meeting you,” Terezi says, terribly self-satisfied, and Vriska tugs on her horn, a reprimand. It does not prevent her from adding, “And after an impromptu feelings jam!” Which earns her an even sharper yank. 

“That was not a _feelings jam.”_

“A childhood trauma rehash by any other name,” Terezi suggests, at which Vriska rolls her eyes, kicks her feet up on the bitter bean fluid table, and deliberately dislodges Terezi’s databook from its perch on the ledge. 

“I’m your first moirail and you know it,” Vriska brags, as though she has any grounding whatsoever for the claim, and although she is in all technicality correct, Terezi keeps silent for a pause long enough to sow the seeds of doubt.

“Who?” Vriska demands.

“The Grand Highblood,” Terezi deadpans, and Vriska snorts a laugh. 

“You’re so fucking bullshit.” 

“I’m serious! Ours was a moirallegiance for the history schoolfeeds. I’m sorry, Vriska, but you just don’t measure up.”

“Shit. I should have known.”

The television flickers to life. A swath of white static stretches across the screen, and then the sigil of the Heiress imprints itself on the black screen, swooping lines of tyrian enclosed by a white circle. TRANSMISSION INCOMING, a subtitle reads, and then another wash of static erases the sigil. 

Moments later, Feferi Peixes’ face flickers into being, a smile stretched from auricular to auricular. 

Her hair occupies almost all of the screen, black curls spilling from her head and snaring over her shoulders. Up close, the details of her makeup are thrown into relief, such as the dusting of powder over her eyes, the thick layers of black lipstick, the bright circles of blush on her cheeks. A gap sits between her two front teeth. She has rubies studded in her canines, and they glitter when she smiles. 

Terezi falls off the sofa and leaps to her feet, hastily straightening her jacket. 

“Good evening, gills,” Feferi says. “It’s so good to sea you!”

“Wish I could say the same,” Vriska says, icy. Their last interaction appears to have left an impression on her. Terezi finds herself in a decidedly more forgiving mood.

“I share my companion’s sentiments,” she volunteers, “but for a different reason.”

“Oh?”

Terezi taps the rims of her glasses meaningfully. Feferi’s laugh burbles up from her stomach, loud and bright, and she leans in closer to the screen. “Clever,” she says. “I’m sorry, I forgot about your oculars.” 

“No offense taken.”

“Good. How are you scuttling in?”

“How are we _what,”_ Vriska says pointedly, and Terezi elbows her. She lopes over to the couch and flops over on it, kicking her feet up on the cushions and staring at the ceiling. 

“Just fine, Heiress. Everything is going along swimmingly.”

“Fintastic!” She claps her hands. “That’s good to hear. Is Karcrab giving you any greef?”

Vriska chortles. Terezi puts her hands behind her back primly. “Not presently,” she says. “There was a brief rough patch. We’re acclimating.”

“Do I need to give him a ring?”

“Probably not. He hasn’t been unkind, necessarily. It’s a matter of difference in temperaments, I think.”

“Yeah,” Vriska butts in, “as in, we’ve got reasonable temperaments, and he doesn’t.”

A thin crease appears between Feferi’s brows. “Seariously?”

“It isn’t anything to be concerned about.”

“All right. But you betta tell me if there’s anyfin fishy with the way things are going over there, okray? You’re my special envoys. Anyfin that happens to _you_ reflects on _me._ You riding my current?”

“Okray,” Terezi says, gingerly. 

“Great!” She settles into her chair. “So tell me what’s been goin’ on.” 

“What do you mean by ‘going on’?”

“I mean, like, how are things! Nobody tells me anyfin _important_ in the reports, they all wanna dress it up pretty, make it look good. You’d fink they never had a bad perigee.”

Vriska cranes her neck. “So we’re here to be your spies,” she surmises.

“No! ‘Spies’ implies somefin sneaky. Everybody knows you two are asshoalciated with me.” She turns her head away from the camera, well-traced brows furrowing, and says, “I’m busy. Just tell them to reef-turn later.”

A murmur, inaudible.

“No. I don’t want — look, I told em to keep a fathom outta the Andalusian System. It’s teemin’ with Imperials.” 

Another murmur, more insistent.

“Use your betta judgment, then,” she sighs, and shoos them away. Her gaze returns to the camera. “Apologies,” she says. “Managin an attack fission.” 

“Fission?”

“Mission! Cod, you’re no fin.” She brightens. “It should be comin’ on the news, actually! I have Sourfish working on it. He says they’ve made great prow-gress.”

Terezi assumes that by ‘Sourfish’ she means her matesprit. “Congratulations,” she offers.

“Thank you.” Feferi beams and reaches for something off-camera. She returns holding a sizable, elaborate databook, which Terezi assumes must be her personal tablet. “Anemoneway. Have you two been comfortable? Involved?”

“Yes to the first, and a hesitant yes to the second.” 

“Hesitant?” Her face remains neutral, but one of her eyebrows twitches. 

“Our first outing was yesterday. As such, we have had little opportunity to acquaint ourselves with the power structure; most regard us as envoys.”

“What was the outing?”

Vriska opens her mouth, and Terezi speaks quickly to prevent whatever remark Vriska harbors from presenting itself. “It was to feed your lusus, Your Majesty.”

“Oh, how is she?”

Terezi keeps a straight face. Vriska, wheezing, manages no such thing.

“Very well,” Terezi replies. “Healthy. She has kept a sizable appetite.”

“Good. I miss her, even though she’s a real stickler for rules.” Feferi makes some notes on her databook. “Well. I can promote you, if you want. How’d you like a command?”

Vriska sits up with interest. “Command,” she says. “Like, corporal? Sergeant? Lieutenant?”

“I was finking of a political position, actually,” Feferi says. “Although you could have one of those titles, if you want!” She gestures to Terezi with the tip of her stylus. “Like you, for example,” she says. “Chief Legal Consultant. Or whatever will get you into their meetings. Maybe we can throw an ‘Imperial’ in there somewhere, bulk up those syllables.” 

Terezi sucks in a breath. Without blinking, Feferi continues. “And you,” she says, indicating Vriska, “I’m thinking . . . First Executive Aide to the Empress? No, ‘First Executive’ is redundant. Oh! _There’s_ an idea,” she purrs, looking up from the databook abruptly. “How’d you like to be an Archagent?”

Vriska chokes on her own tongue. “Pardon,” she says, “I beg — I beg your pardon?”

Feferi frowns, taps the camera with one razor-edged black claw. “Yes. Is this thing transmitting? I had Sollux working on it for hours yesterday, to make sure the connection was clear.”

_“Archagent?”_

“Oh, yes. I offered the job to Solly, but he wouldn’t take it. Kept carping on about how much time he spent with the spy business, as if he doesn’t already do the work of an Archagent without the title . . . I threatened to give it to Karcrab, but he figured it wouldn’t look good if it seemed like he was on my payroll, even if it’s _true._ But you! Nobody would care about you being my offish-ial.” 

“Uh,” Vriska says, a bit breathless. “I guess? I mean, yeah, I’d totally do a good job with it. But.”

“I’m not sure either of us are entirely qualified for those — assuredly generous — positions,” Terezi says, attempting to deliver it gently. This doesn’t faze Feferi.

“Pshaw. Like any of the Empress’ Archagents are _qualified,”_ she drawls. “She tosses out titles to whoever she likes on any given night. At least you’ve got a purpose. And the legal consultant thing isn’t even real, I just made it up! So it’s impossible to be _un_ qualified for it.”

“Our purpose being to spy on Vantas.”

“Not _spy!_ Just report. And do good, you know, make fins happen.” Feferi flutters her fingers. “Jeez, it’s like I have to shell out everyfin.”

“All right,” Vriska says slowly, as if puzzling her way through a riddle. “So — and I’m usually not one to turn down honors, Heiress, don’t get me wrong, I’m game for this — you’re just gonna pop off a note to Vantas and let him know we’re supposed to be present in any and all behind-closed-doors conversations?”

“Yep.” She pops the -p. Her stylus cuts a few swift strokes over the databook, and then she looks up, smiling. “Congratulations, Archagent Serket. Your first duty will be to sit in on General Vantas’ meeting roster.”

“Meetings,” Vriska repeats flatly. Terezi stifles a laugh.

“Yes. Chief Imperial Legal Consultant — ooh, that’s a mouthful; never mind, we’re dropping the ‘Imperial’ — Pyrope will join you.”

“Sure,” Vriska says, slowly. “All right. Cool? I guess?”

“Fintastic.” Feferi chirps, a weird, burbling sound that crawls up from her thorax which Terezi presumes must be normal for seadwellers, because it sure as hell doesn’t sound natural. “I’ll have someone draw up the paperwork later. If you need to talk to me, use this doohickey. Sol says it’s super safe.” She rolls her eyes. “Not that I’ll always be available, of course. Things are picking up over here, and I barely have _any_ time left to myshellf anymore!”

“What a trial,” Vriska says, while Terezi interrupts with, “What do you mean, ‘picking up’?”

“You know! A coupla Imperial glubbers came scouting planetside yesterday night, and Sol had to blow ‘em out of the air. A pain in the bass. But it’s all okay. Nobody’s cover got blown.” She checks a rose gold pocket husktop and frowns. “Ah, glub. That being all, ladies, I’m going to sign off! I have a shoal ton of things to do. And a mess to clean up in the Andalusian System.”

“Good luck with it.”

“Thanks! Talk to you gills later.” With a cheerful wave, Feferi reaches for the side of the camera, and the feed switches off.

Terezi takes a deep breath and settles onto the arm of the cushioned platform. She folds her hands in front of her mouth and waits a moment before speaking. 

“As _so_ cia-ted,” Vriska says, clipping the syllables cleanly. “‘Associated.’ _Asshoalciated_. In the hierarchy of annoying quirks —”

“Hers doesn’t even rank in the upper quartile,” Terezi says, and shuts off the television. 

“Fair. Upper half, then.”

“Mm. Likely. I once knew a girl who spoke exclusively in cat puns.”

Vriska shakes her head. “The nerve. ‘How’s my giant horrorterror lusus?’ Oh, she’s fine. Carnivorous. Murderous. Said to tell you to call more often. _Christ_.”

“Archagent,” Terezi says, testing the word on her tongue. “Chief Legal Consultant. That’s not even a real position.”

“It is now, apparently.” 

“Do you ever get the feeling she’s fucking with us?”

“All the time,” Vriska says, without hesitation. “All the time. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was playing us all, but if she was going to fuck us over, she would have done it a long time ago.” 

“That’s true. Do you think she’ll make a good Empress?”

“A steaming pile of hoofbeast shit would make a better Empress than we’ve got right now,” Vriska grunts, and Terezi concedes with a vaguely affirming noise.

Vriska kicks her feet up. Something occurs to her. “Hey,” she says, urgently, “hey. Quick question. Does Archagent outrank a General?”

“No. They’re in different sects of the government. That’s like asking if a captain outranks a baker.”

“Yes. They do. Next question.” 

“ _No.”_

“Shit,” she sighs. “I was looking forward to telling Vantas.” 

“He’ll probably be furious, as it is.”

“True and also excellent. I wonder if he’ll cry.” 

“How very hateful of you.”

Vriska narrows her eyes. “Get your pan out of the gutter.”

“Slander. My pan has never been less than saintlike,” Terezi says loftily, and before Vriska can retort, the Sign glows to life on the television. Red letters blaze over the top of the screen. 

MY OFFICE, it says. NOW.

“Well,” Terezi remarks, “she works quickly.” 

“Do you want to blow him off? Let’s blow him off.”

“As if you would miss a chance to rub his face in it.”

“You underestimate my restraint,” Vriska says, which is an outrageous lie and she knows it, but she peels herself off the couch.

 

* * *

 

Karkat is leaving his office when they arrive. He’s got a databook clutched under one arm and is using his other hand to lock the door — analog, Terezi notices, with a latchkey lock and an honest-to-goodness key — and doesn’t notice their approach until Vriska yells at him.

“Oh,” he says. “It’s you. Where were you ten minutes ago?”

“In our quarters. Which are ten minutes away.” Vriska folds her arms and shifts her weight to one side. 

“Ten minutes, my ass.”

“Sorry, General, next time I’ll bring a fucking stopwatch —”

“Apologies for our lateness,” Terezi corrects. “You called us rather urgently. Is there an emergency?” 

“There’s always a fucking emergency,” he sighs. “Trollkind as a species is never not in the middle of losing its collective shit. However! At the moment, we are not _actively_ being murdered, which is a significant improvement from the average. So, relative to that, no emergency.”

“You summoned us, then, for . . . ?”

Vriska interrupts. “Did you hear about our promotion?” She puffs out her chest. “‘Archagent Serket’ doesn’t sound too shabby, don’t you think?”

“No, I — what the _fuck?”_ He squints. “You’re shitting me.”

“Nope.” She drawls it. “Heiress-approved. You can ask her, if you want. Please ask her. I want to watch.” 

“I — all right. Okay. Fine. Whatever. That particular dungheap is officially postponed until I get through the larger, higher-order dungheaps in front of me. We will move through this shit with impeccable chronology. This shit will be moved through in such a linear order that time travelers won’t be able to touch it with a ten foot pole.”

“General?”

“Shut your windgaper, Counselor, let a man finish his convoluted metaphor. We’ll deal with the Archagent fuckery after Mass.”

“Mass?” Vriska pulls a face.

“For the Cult.”

“I thought you weren’t a religious leader.”

“I’m _not._ But _you_ try telling the Sufferites that. I’ll hand over the whole damn rebellion if you can make it stick.”

“Having Mass doesn’t exactly discourage them.” 

“Up until about three sweeps ago,” he sighs, “there was a group of dipshits who wouldn’t stop hanging around my office asking for me to spout a Testament, so in order to get them to piss off, Kanaya arranged for me to yell at them once a week. I usually just read morning announcements, anyway.” He drops the key in his pocket and turns briskly on his heel. “You should come. We can talk on the way.” 

“Talk about what, then? If not our promotions.” Terezi picks up her pace to keep step with him. Vriska strolls along behind, deliberately casual.

“You know that thing we talked about last night? That thing you said we were under no circumstances to talk about outside of my office?”

Terezi spares a sniff in Vriska’s direction; she’s anxious, but not outright alarmed. Terezi nods.

“Right, well, I’m gonna break commandment, because someone else is shoving their overgrown olfactory knob into the situation. And no, before you ask, it’s not because I told anybody, because I’m neither a total dipshit nor an idiot.” 

“Debatable on two counts,” Vriska mutters, and Karkat briskly gives her the finger over his shoulder without once breaking stride. It has the fluidity of a well-practiced movement.

“Whose overgrown olfactory knob, exactly, has introduced itself to the proceedings?” 

“The kid’s moirail,” he says. “Broad by the name of Sikhir Tanata. She was on the ship when Kivyes went down.”

Vriska shoulders her way past Karkat so she’s a step ahead of him, instead of behind, and frowns at him. “I thought nobody,” she says, and, trailing off, casts a glance at Terezi for help.

“It seems difficult,” Terezi says, sharing her rising anxiety, “for Tanata to file complaint against Vriska without some knowledge of Vriska’s unorthodox talents, which she would not, save a breach of secrecy among one of us three. And neither Vriska nor I have incentive to make such a breach.”

“Put your sword down, Counselor,” Karkat says, tiredly, turning a corner. “I didn’t tell anyone. Besides.” They halt in front of an elevator, and he calls for one going up. “It’s not Serket that she’s got issue with. It’s you.”

Terezi pauses. In the same moment, Vriska’s face screws into a knot of irritated confusion. “What the fuck does she want with Terezi?”

“Nothing to get twisted over, legally speaking.” The elevator comes. Karkat waits for the doors to close before continuing. “She thinks it’s Pyrope’s fault for getting caught in the net, or cutting off your harness, or whatever. Doesn’t hold water as far as punishment’s concerned, I can’t put you on fucking probation for being a klutz in the proximity of a martyr.” He looks at Terezi out of the corner of his eye. She lifts her chin, challenging him to call the lie. 

“A relief to hear,” she says, at the same time as Vriska, now considerably more relaxed, demands, “We’re getting paid?”

“In order: it’s not the legal shit you should be worried about, so no, it’s not, and yes, you are. _Your_ pay, however,” he says, stabbing his finger at Vriska, “is going to suffer a one hundred percent income tax for the next sweep.” 

“The fuck? Why?”

“You know why,” he says darkly, and that shuts her up. “And it’s not enough to justify throwing a fit over, so don’t bother. The reason you should care about Tanata is because she’s more than capable of hunting you down in her free time, and she’s of the old school in terms of revenge.” 

Vriska snorts. “And her job is . . . ?”

“An ex-soldier. Member of the general infantry.”

“Great. Terezi could beat her drunk and left-handed,” Vriska informs him. “Appreciate the warning, but it’s not really necessary.”

“Fine! I’m just saying, you might not want to walk around unarmed for the next couple of nights.”

“I never walk around unarmed, Vantas, and I take offense at the implication I would ever.” 

He eyes the holster at her hip. “That’s apparent,” he says. “Far be it for me to recommend anything but constant fucking vigilance for someone of your temperament, because by God, you need it, but might I advise a less visible holster?”

“What do you want me to do, stuff it down my pants?”

“Or, you know, carry a smaller fucking gun —”

“My dears,” Terezi says. The doors slide open. She steps out first, and holds her cane in front of the doors to stall them. “A sense of decorum would not go amiss.”

“All right, whatever. Carry a goddamn bazooka at the hip, what do I care.” 

“Please don’t give her ideas.”

They start off down the hallway. The office floors of the compound have a distinctly less homey feel than the residential area, with industrial durasteel paneling and glistening white tile that clicks cleanly under the Terezi’s boots. Fluorescents in the ceiling cast every inch of the place in blisteringly unflattering light, and the walls are dotted with windows, but plain, for the most part, save hardwood doors, all lacking fingerprint-openers.

“You use analog locks,” she notes.

“Yeah. Harder to hack. Also a lot cheaper; Peixes chose some weird-ass areas to cut corners. ” Karkat takes a left and heads toward a wide set of double-doors at the end of the hallway. 

“Unless you’ve got a decent lockpick,” Vriska points out.

“Please don’t break into my office. There’s nothing fucking there, unless you want an assload of paperwork.” 

“I’m not threatening you, douchelord, I’m telling you you’ve got a fucking security risk.” 

“Well, Archagent, your first order of business can be to petition the Heiress for an apportionment of funds to update our fucking locks.” 

“Yeah, and my second will be getting back my goddamn salary.” 

Karkat reaches the doors and shoulders them open, letting them swing back without holding them for Vriska. “Only idiots join revolutions for profit,” he says.

“Don’t remind me,” Vriska mutters, and follows him.

The block is a huge, with a vaulted Cathedral-ceiling and dangling yellow lamps hanging from the rafters. Rows upon rows of pews crowd it, and a frosted glass window occupies most of the far wall, before which rises a slender raised pulpit. Trolls have packed in like saltfish, filling the pews and settling in the second-story balconies that protrude from the wings. There have to be five hundred in the room, at least. 

Karkat strides down the center aisle like he’s the last troll in the universe and he’s putting on a show. Terezi follows him, as there is no available alternative; the crowd watches them. The howl of conversation calms to a burbling. A few lift their hands to wave at Karkat, and he summarily ignores them.

Kanaya sits in a chair aside the pulpit, quietly working on a mobile husktop. When she sees them coming, she shuts it and rises politely.

“Evening,” she says. “Will you be following your prepared —”

“Toss the notes,” Karkat orders her. “I’m going off-script.”

Her shoulders sag with a minute disappointment suggesting this is neither unexpected nor pleasant. “All right,” she says. “May I ask —”

He nods towards Terezi and Vriska, and she inclines her head. “Understood.” 

“Sorry about this, Kanaya.”

“Do as you must,” she says, in a way that communicates with tasteful restraint how long he will be apologizing for this, and gestures to the wings. “Counselor, Captain. There is a spare pew available, should you prefer to stay.”

Vriska cranes her neck to get a look at the chandelier. “How long’s the service?”

“It depends how much he has to get off his chest. The Mass is infrequently a businesslike procedure.” 

“Standing record?”

“Three hours.” 

“Fucking hell.”

“It was an unusual occasion. He opted to deliver a lecture on the virtues of following orders to a group which had, on one of the more recent missions, declined to do so. It was the source of several of his most lyrical threats to date.”

“What’s the likelihood he does that tonight?” 

“I am not going to lie to you,” Kanaya says, sighing faintly. “The odds are high.” 

“Evening, assholes,” Karkat announces, climbing the pulpit. “I’m here. Yes. Thank you. Your respect is appreciated.” Then, within the same breath: “All right, I can’t talk over all of you beating your grubby mitts, pipe down.”

“Our benevolent leader,” Vriska deadpans. Terezi elbows her.

“Tonight,” he cries, gripping the podium, “is your lucky fucking night! Because I, your Messiah, and more importantly, your General, am going to introduce you to someone who is absolutely not going to make life easier for any of you, but hand to the Handmaid, you’ll probably be kissing her glutes come Light Season anyway.”

Vriska shifts uncomfortably. “He’s not gonna,” she whispers.

“He is,” Terezi replies.

“Any of you heard of the Summoner? Yeah? Of course you have, he’s basic schoolfeeding. Big rustblood with wings, had a thing for animals. You know him, I know him, everyone who ever thought, ‘Hey, this whole caste system is kind of fucked up’ probably knows him. He’s the hemoegalitarian revolutionary it _isn’t_ treason to talk about! Well! Turns out, the Sufferer wasn’t the only anticasteist filling buckets!”

“A graceless method of introduction,” Terezi muses, “but effective. Not what I would have chosen.”

“I’m going to die,” Vriska says, with absolute seriousness. “I am going to die. If you run me through with your swordstick right now, I will live in eternal gratitude for sparing me the long and arduous trauma of listening to this incompetent describe my ancestors pailing.” 

“If I run you through with my swordstick . . . you will _live_ in eternal gratitude.”

“Shut the fuck up.” 

Karkat makes a sweeping gesture. “Some of you,” he says, “may have seen some new people. Or you haven’t, and you’ve been minding your own business, at least _pretending_ that you have some modicum of respect for others’ privacy, in which case, good for you! You are officially less of a shithead than everyone else. I don’t think you exist, but I am nothing if not a fucking bastion of hope.”

“He’s a bastion of something, all right.” 

“Usually, darling, you blackflirt with someone to their face, not through your moirail.”

“This is platonic, you shit. I’d sooner pail the fuckin’ Admiral than take a gander that bean-horned SOB without his clothes on.”

“Well, step one of that process being accomplished —”

Vriska claps her hand over Terezi’s mouth and shoves. Terezi licks it.

“You’re disgusting.” 

“It’s part of my appeal.” Terezi rests her chin on her hand and sticks out her tongue _._

Kanaya regards them from the corner of one eye. “May I suggest,” she murmurs, “that you take a pew?”

Vriska rolls her eyes and struts off in the direction of the wings. 

There are, in fact, no pews left, so they plant themselves in the crowd of trolls standing under the eaves of the balcony. Off to the side, it’s more difficult to make out what Karkat is saying, which Vriska seems to find perfectly agreeable, and Terezi doesn’t mind enough to protest. Once Vriska starts elbowing people — half of them with the metal arm, which likely adds to the deterrent effect — the other trolls part and give them a path to the wall, which Vriska leans against, and hooking her thumbs in her pockets.

“. . . point being, of course,” Karkat is continuing, having apparently invested his time into a long tangent on the subject of the Summoner, or perhaps Mindfang, or any subject vaguely germane to the two, “as should be readily apparent to anyone with functioning ganderbulbs or functionally compensatory nostrils, that personage herself is shitting around in this here area, and you all better go ahead and acquaint yourselves with the idea. There you go. That’s your update. Stop gossiping about it, you unscrupulous fucks.”

“You can’t deny that he has a certain aptitude for profanity,” Terezi muses.

“Downright prodigious. If only it weren’t wasted on that personality.” 

“I don’t understand why you don’t like him. He’s fine. A little prickly, but it’s not as though _you’ve_ got a leg to stand on, there.” 

“Pin it on some kind of complex,” Vriska says absently, waving it off. “Hey, isn’t that Aradia?”

At first, Terezi thinks this is a clumsy deflection, but a hint of raspberry emerges from the crowd, and she becomes aware that Aradia is, indeed, present, standing in the wings near the back of the room. At Vriska’s beckoning, the troll begins pushing her way through the crowd, wriggling around the edge of the aisle to come greet them.

She wears a new uniform: grey, with her own symbol printed over the front, but lacking the Sign itself anywhere. Her hair has been cut, and it hangs at her shoulders in faint waves. Terezi nudges Vriska.

“Morning,” Aradia says, wedging herself in beside Terezi. “How have you two been?”

“Well enough. I’m Archagent now. That means I’ve technically got more cred than Vantas.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“It doesn’t,” Aradia agrees amiably, “but congratulations, all the same. I heard your mission last night was successful.”

Vriska clears her throat. “It went to hell,” she says. “I saved the day, as per usual.”

“Of course.” Aradia glances at Terezi. “How are you, Counselor?”

“Fine. I’ve been missing your good sense. Everything seems to go downhill when you’re not running point. I almost _died,_ Megido, for God’s sake. Don’t you dare leave us alone again _.”_

Aradia laughs in a way that suggests she believes this to be comedic hyperbole; Vriska grinds her jaw and looks away. “If only you would stop running off without me,” she returns, and Terezi shrugs, abashed. 

“I trust you’ve found something to do.”

“Yeah.” She plucks at the collar of her uniform. “I signed up for the pilot service. They’ve got plants in the Fleet who run supplies back and forth from Imperial resource deposits in the Capitol — that’s why they’re so close — and they needed people to man the ships. I figured I had a decent run at a ship.”

“That’s risky duty,” Vriska points out.

“It’s nothing, compared to gamblignant ships. I had to reacquaint myself with the feeling of a well-maintained infrastructure.”

“I hope you’re enjoying yourself,” Terezi says.

“Yeah. It’s kind of weird; I forgot what it was like, in big cities. You spend enough time on outlaw ships, you kind of forget the hemocaste is as . . . official, I guess, as it is.”

“Official?”

“Legal,” Aradia clarifies. “Nobody takes orders from rustbloods, in the city. I had to pretend I was a laborer, instead of a point troll.”

“And it’s different, with gamblignants?”

“Kind of. The laissez-faire nature of the whole thing helps. On gamblignant ships, if someone drew on me, I got to shoot back.” 

“I told you,” Vriska says, with no small degree of smugness. “Theft. The great equalizer.”

“I mean,” Aradia says, “I suppose?”

People are staring at Vriska. Terezi suspects Karkat might still be talking about her.

“I figured out what’s up with Maryam, by the way,” Aradia says. She nods to the woman herself, who lifts her hand in acknowledgement. “I had to ask around a bit before I found anyone who knew her.”

“Do tell.”

“She’s a rainbow drinker.”

Vriska guffaws, drawing the wrathful attention of several nearby Sufferites. “Oh, neat,” she coos. “And Karkat’s a werebarkbeast, right?”

“It’s true. You wondered why she looked the way she does.” Aradia shrugs. “Apparently she was turned at a young age. It’s why her skin glows.”

“Right. Okay.”

“You lived on a planet with zombies for nine sweeps,” Aradia says, mystified. “You’ve personally fed a horrorterror. Rainbow drinkers is where you draw the line?”

“Everyone has to have a line,” Vriska says. “You have to draw a line in the sand. There is some shit I will not take. I will take zombies. I will take horrorterrors. I will take necromancers and Church conspiracies and my old woman being a closet revolutionary. I will take the Second Coming of Troll Christ turning out to be an ornery little shit with a God complex. I will not take rainbow drinkers.”

Aradia laughs quietly. “I’m not actually a necromancer,” she points out. “I can’t control the spirits I see.”

“Uh, that business you pulled on the clowns suggests otherwise.” 

“That was . . . nonstandard fare.” 

“Okay, difference being?”

“I can’t do it regularly.”

“So you’re a sporadic necromancer, not a chronic one. Big whoop.”

“I suppose you could put it that way, yes.”

A Sufferite shushes them vigorously. Vriska flips him off.

“How did you find that out about Maryam, Megido?”

“I asked her,” she says simply.

“Has it occurred to you that she was being sarcastic?”

“Maybe. I’d sooner put my money on her being a drinker than any other explanation, though.”

“You two,” Terezi whispers, “are interrupting His Infuriation’s noble sermon. What would the Sufferer say of this disrespect?”

“The Sufferer can suck my bulge. As can his descendant.” 

“I didn’t realize you felt that way about him.”

“Fuck _off_.”

“I will keep teasing you until you either admit your raging hateboner or stop being mean.”

“Ask me to cut out my own bloodpusher, why don’t you.” 

Karkat is winding down. He’s gasping for breath between sections of his speech, which can only suggest that for his own safety he’ll be finished soon, lest he collapse. 

“At the very least,” Terezi says, “you will get many a chance to annoy him over the coming nights. I believe Feferi’s intention was to have you up close and personal with the nitty-gritty of rebel operations.”

“Yeah.” Karkat pounds his fist on the podium, and a vindictive grin twists its way across Vriska’s face. “Goddamn. Peixes. If it weren’t for everything else, I’d almost like her.”

 

* * *

 

“Well,” Vriska announces, “being Archagent sucks. I’m quitting.”

“It’s a lifelong position,” Terezi informs her, not lifting her head. She’s curled in one of the armchairs in their quarters’ common room, a databook balanced in her lap, with the dregs of mug of bitter bean fluid on the table beside her. She tugs out her auricular sound nubs to hear Vriska as the latter storms in. Two weeks have inched by since her appointment to the position, and the complaint is not a new one.

“Well, not anymore. I’m calling Feferi tomorrow to tell her so.”

“No, you won’t,” Terezi says, scrolling down a page, “because then you’d be an ordinary recruit. You’d have to run drills with the rest of them.” 

“With a spring in my step and a song in my bloodpusher. If I have to sit through one more episode of ‘Important Dignitary from Middle of Nookfuck, Nowhere, Bitches to Karkat Vantas About Irrelevant Bullshit’ I am going to fling myself out the window of that damn office.” 

“Just imagine how Karkat feels,” Terezi muses.

“I don’t want to imagine how Karkat feels. I don’t _need_ to imagine how Karkat feels. I already _know_ how Karkat feels about it _,_ because he won’t stop fucking _telling_ everyone within earshot!”

“Surely he has some kind of emotional nuance.”

“You wouldn’t know it from talking to him,” Vriska grumbles, and ambles into the nutritionblock. “‘Hurr durr, I’m General Vantas, and I don’t know how to express my feelings besides _blind_ _impotent rage!’”_

“Our rooms are probably under surveillance, you know.” 

“Good! You hear that, Vantas?” Vriska cups her hands around her mouth. “You’re an asshole!”

Terezi shuts off the databook and puts it aside with a sigh. “You agreed to be Archagent.”

“I didn’t know it would suck!”

“It’s an administrative job. What did you think it was?”

She tugs open the food cooling unit and doesn’t answer, sulking.

“Did you think it was like the Hollywood version? Gunfights and subterfuge?”

“I don’t know! Maybe!”

“Like one of the Troll James Bond movies?”

“Stop,” Vriska groans, pulling out an iced grubsicle. “Stoooooooop.”

“Stop what?” Terezi grins. 

Vriska flashes her a pained look, sticks the grubsicle in her mouth, and shuts the food cooling unit. “I a’ naugh eel-y qui’in,” she concedes. When she removes the iced treat, her teeth are dyed a dark red. “But hell if I wouldn’t like to.”

“Then tell Feferi. I’m sure she can find something more active for you to do.”

“I don’t want to risk being put on sanitation duty or something like that. Vantas has it in for me, I swear it.” 

“I doubt that.”

“You shouldn’t. He doesn’t like me.” 

“It’s debatable whether he likes anybody.”

Vriska concedes with a grunt. She perches on the arm of Terezi’s chair and cranes her neck. “What’s that?”

“The Uniform Comparative Fault Act of 8906.”

“Oh. And here I was hoping you’d found a hobby.” 

“You’re my hobby.”

“I’m your moirail, and that’s not an answer.” Vriska plucks the tablet from her hands. Terezi lets it go with a faint noise of protest. “I thought you had all this shit memorized.”

“Memory requires refreshment. I’m not actually a prodigy, I just work very hard.” 

“Hm.” She clears her throat and holds it up to the light. “In comparing the fault of the several parties for the purpose of obtaining percentages there are a number of implications arising from the concept of fault. The conduct of the claimant or of any defendant may be more or less at fault, depending upon all the circumstances including such matters as — oh my God, I’m going to puke.”

“Don’t do it on the databook.” Terezi reclaims it.

“It’s fucking Old Alternian, I don’t know how you stand it.”

“It is not Old Alternian.”

“Might as well be.” Vriska sticks out her stained tongue. Terezi curbs a smile that would have been entirely too fond. 

“Don’t you have something better to do than make fun of my job? A General to antagonize, something like that?”

“I’m antagonized out.”

“A barefaced lie and also impossible.” 

Vriska pokes her in the side, which Terezi swats away. “I have to work,” she insists. “You’re distracting the Chief Legal Consultant of the Movement for the Second Alternian Empire.”

“Sue me.” 

“If you think I won’t, you obviously don’t know me very well.”

“Archagent trumps legal consultant anyway,” Vriska says, but drapes herself over the back of Terezi’s chair and lets her be, more or less. 

She reaches for the remote on the bitter bean fluid table and flicks on the newsfeed. “They’ve got a different broadcast here,” she remarks, pointing at the screen. “On New Bellona, the anchor was always this violetblood with cute horns.”

Terezi sniffs in the general direction of the TV. This newsfeeder’s blood toes the line between aquamarine and cerulean, and her horns are small, narrowing points arching back from her head.

“Different system, different network. Channel’s probably owned by a different company. In the Sammak System, the anchor’s a member of royalty. Probably bought his way into the business.”

“I always wondered what happened to actors during Conscription.”

“Someone told me you gotta submit an audition tape with your test. If they like it, you play an extra in propaganda vids until someone casts you.”

Terezi’s nostrils flare as the scent coming from the television changes, fresh headlines rolling across the bottom of the screen. Vriska moves to switch channels. Terezi grabs her wrist and stills her. “Hold on,” she says. “Unmute it.”

Vriska shrugs and thumbs the mute button. 

“— ninety-five confirmed dead,” the anchor says, her voice bursting from the speakers, “one-hundred seventy-three injured, and twenty-nine missing. Of those numbers, legislacerators constitute thirty-seven of the dead, twenty-one of the injured, and nine of the missing trolls. Cleanup teams are in the process of searching for survivors from the _Superego,_ but to little conclusive evidence. Among the confirmed casualties is Baristerror Clarens Darrow, a member of the Esteemed Court of Baristerrors, the Bar’s highest order —”

The picture changes to the image of a smoking battle cruiser, its prow divided from its stern by a vast gash in its hull. Debris drifts from the wreck, jagged shards of glass and durasteel. Beside it floats a smaller Corvette, almost completely torn out of shape, its bridge crushed along one side from clear impact with the larger ship’s starboard.

“— the culprit ship,” the anchor is saying, when Terezi tunes in, “the _Blackest Heart,_ is under investigation by Church authorities for insubordination and culling of legislacerators. The Bar is under the process of suing for right to trial in a movement lead by Baristerror Elenna Kaagan, who will be with us for a statement in a few moments. Magistragedy Jonika Kishar has notably declined to comment on the culpability of the _Blackest Heart_ for this incident, although her office has put forth a statement of sympathy for the victims and their moirails.”

“ _Blackest Heart_ is a juggalo ship,” Vriska says, surprised. “The Church isn’t gonna —”

Terezi silences her with a quick, sharp gesture. Cut to the _Superego_ , again, and now Imperial cleanup ships are closing in on the smoking wreckage, extending claw-arms to prey apart the metal that fused together in the explosion. Terezi approaches the screen, trying to get a better taste of the ships; the cruiser is an _Abernathy-_ class ship, distinguished by the pointed ridge rising over its back and the flat whale-tail rudders. Its designation has been charred away by the impact, but the bottom of a few letters are still visible from under smears of ash. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because the headlines call it by name.

“The _Sound Judgment,”_ the anchor says, “was en route to the Nepthys System upon impact with the _Blackest Heart_ , acting as legal escort to the _Superego,_ a prison vessel responsible for ferrying passengers to high-security areas. Bounties have been offered for the safe return of the nine missing legislacerators, who are presumed to be aboard the _Heart,_ although Church officials have denied requests to search the ship upon the basis that it is sanctified ground, and thus cannot be boarded by any but the Faithful.”

“That’s hoofbeast shit,” Terezi snaps. “Search warrants trump holy writ — that’s _Warden v. Hayden,_ that was settled over a hundred sweeps ago!”

“Easy,” Vriska says, alarmed. “Just — maybe there’s more to it.”

The anchor shuffles her papers. “Coming up next: an interview with the Supreme Laughsassin about the incident and the Church’s recourse, as well as a panel of legislacerators, who will be discussing the legal issues arising from it. Stay tuned afterward for Troll Gordon Ramsay’s Top Five End of Dark Season Dishes, and your nightly address from the Imperial Governor of your sector! Praise the Condescension.” She offers a beatific smile, and the program switches to commercial break. 

Vriska mutes the television and watches Terezi anxiously. 

Terezi steps away from the television and paces back to her chair. The cream is curdling in her bitter bean fluid, white crescents rising to the oily black surface. Her cane scrapes against the floor, absentmindedly left to drag. 

“It’s my fault.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Vriska says immediately, grabbing Terezi by the shoulder. “No, it’s not. Some sopor-addled nookwhiff took a dive at the helm and accidentally T-boned a star cruiser. How is _that_ your fault?” 

“It wasn’t an accident. Accidents don’t happen to Bar vehicles.”

“You seem to have a pretty basic misunderstanding of how the law of entropy works.” 

“Accidents like that don’t happen,” she says, gesturing to the screen. “Not to the Bar, and not via Church ships. No one’s that clumsy. And the Church and the Bar both know it.”

“So they’re getting pissy with each other. Big —”

“Yes, _big deal,”_ Terezi hisses, “because when ancient and revered institutions get ‘pissy’ with each other, people die!”

“People die every night.”

“And we convict the people who kill them!” 

“Calm down,” Vriska says, abrasive and soothing in equal measure. “Just look at the facts, for a minute. You and I took off, what, a perigee ago? That means they sat on their hands for at least a perigee before doing something about it. Does that sound like either of them? Hell, we don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, up there. Maybe they had a dispute over something else. Maybe the Magistragedy forgot to send GHB a wriggling day present. We don’t know!” 

“We do know.”

“We really fucking don’t,” she argues. “Look. Would you convict yourself for this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, if they tried you for the _Sound Judgment_ and the _Superego._ Brought you before a set of juroreapers and everything. Would you find yourself guilty?”

“No,” Terezi says slowly.

“There you go.” Vriska smirks, as though through her ingenious machinations she has produced the platonic ideal of syllogisms. 

“Legal culpability,” Terezi says, “is not the same thing as ethical fault.”

“Since when did you make that distinction?”

Terezi flinches.

“Way meaner than I meant that to sound,” Vriska decides. “Way meaner. Not what I meant! I meant that you’re right! In this case. The law is a fine metric for deciding whose fault is which. And the only people anybody seems to think deserves shit for this is a bunch of clowns, which, like, cool, no skin off my vertebra.” 

“I accused them of treason. Of coercion. I laid out the relationship between the Magistragedy and the Grand Highblood for everyone to — why didn’t I _think?”_ Terezi paces. “Putting something like that out in the open! It’s Neophytic! It’s sloppy! It’s reprehensible!”

“It was a good argument,” Vriska offers, weakly, clearly out of her depth.

“Yes! A good argument in the wrong damn courtroom. Denouncing the Church in front of a juggalo jury. ‘Finest legal mind of her generation _,_ ’ indeed.” Terezi snorts. “Any pan-addled clerkiller can make a _good_ argument. A legislacerator should know where and when to make it.”

“You were defending me,” Vriska says quietly.

Terezi stops. “What? No.” She shakes her head. “This has nothing to do with you. This isn’t your fault at all. I could have won that trial without the third point, I know I could have. And even if I couldn’t, it’s not like it changed the outcome, anyway.” The realization slides an icy needle into her gut. “It wouldn’t have changed a thing.”

“You were doing your best to help me.”

“No,” she says, “no, I mean, I was, of course, but it didn’t _matter._ Don’t you see? None of it mattered! I could have stood there and sung the Imperial Anthem, for all it would have changed things, because they still sentenced me to kill you, and I still would’ve disobeyed. There was no timeline where I would have let you go to the blade in that courtblock. Everything I said was irrelevant and I said it _anyway._ ”

“You didn’t know that when you were planning the argument,” Vriska says staunchly. “You were doing your best. You even had me convinced, and I knew I was guilty going in.”

“I should have known that,” Terezi seethes. “I could have known that. If I’d paid one whit of attention to what I’d been _doing_ for the past couple of perigees, I would have noticed that I cannot keep a level head where you are concerned, and worked around my own inadequacy! Like a sensible! Fucking! Troll!” 

“I don’t think it’s an inadequacy.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. In the realm of law, it is.” She rubs her eyes under her glasses. They’ve begun to itch. “Revised Charter and Code of the Cruelest Bar, Article XIV, Section 1: ‘A legislacerator will not be assigned to a target with whom they are romantically involved in any quadrant, or with whom the legislacerator has been involved within the past three point five sweeps.’ I was pale for you before I walked into that courtblock.” 

“But not when you were assigned to me.”

“That’s a fallacy,” Terezi snaps. “The code is clearly intended to prevent romance from interfering with legislacerative work; anyone else would have surrendered you the first instant they knew their feelings were unprofessional. I couldn’t do that, because I thought nobody else stood a chance of winning your case. I was arrogant.”

“And you were right. Nobody else could’ve won that case. Nobody else could have pulled it off.” 

“You’ve met what, a dozen legislacerators in your life? Most of them Neophytes.” Terezi sighs. “Forgive me, Vriska, but your experience with Bar personnel does not make you especially well-suited to judge their aptitude.”

“Nobody else would have had the globes to _try,”_ Vriska says sharply. “They would’ve taken a look at my record and hung me from one of Zahhak’s horns. You were the only one who gave a shit about me, Pyrope, is this news to you?” 

Terezi clamps her jaw shut and does not loose the retort building behind them, which runs along the lines of _And now ninety-five trolls are dead._ Because that would imply she regrets any of it, and although she scrapes and scrapes along the bottom of her bloodpusher for some ounce of that understandable and probably merited sentiment, she cannot find it. Guilt without regret is a perverse feeling. 

“It was misconduct, at least,” she says. “A violation of protocol. The Magistragedy knew it. She could see it. It was obvious, to her, Handmaid knows how obvious it was to anyone else.” Aradia, too, and Sollux; for all Terezi managed to be subtle, she might as well have painted VRISKA SERKET in red letters across her back.

“I told you to leave,” Vriska says. “On the ship. I told you to go without me.”

“That wouldn’t have — have you not been listening? That was never an option.” Terezi snatches up her cane and drums her fingers frantically on its head. “You are too important in too many ways.”

“So my ancestor pailed the Summoner! That doesn’t mean _you_ should have to —”

Terezi, brimming with exasperation and self-revilement and miserable heartsick affection, seizes Vriska by one horn and jerks her down to look at Terezi. 

“You are important,” she says, “to _me.”_

Vriska blinks.

“You absolute dumbass.” Terezi releases her horn, and Vriska sways back upright. “This is not about whether or not I regret saving you. That is, in fact, irrelevant to the question, because I am incapable of regretting saving you. If you gave me one hundred thousand chances to do it over again, I would make the exact same choice one hundred thousand times. That is how deep my foolishness where you are concerned goes. That does not mean,” she adds, peering over the rim of her glasses, “that I cannot lament the byproducts of that choice, or that my guilt over those byproducts is unmerited. This is a problem with me, not you.” 

“Doesn’t sound like it.”

“It is.” Terezi lets out a breath. The news is back on. The Supreme Laughsassin, paint layered so thick he hardly looks like a troll, is answering questions in monosyllabic statements of affirmation or negation, usually punctuated with ‘motherfucker.’ She wonders who they’ll get for the legislacerator panel. Kaagan will probably make an appearance; she always had a flair for the press. 

“I need a walk,” she decides.

“Okay.” Vriska goes to get her jacket from the nutritionblock table, and Terezi stops her.

“No,” she says. “I think I need a walk alone.”

“Okay.” Vriska steps back and sits back down, holding herself like a cholerbear sitting on glass. 

“It’s nothing personal.”

“I get it. Alone time. You got it, Counselor.” Vriska shoots for a smile and hits a mile shy of the mark. “Be back before sunrise, don’t do sopor, use a pail. You know the drill.”

Terezi gives her a cursory smile of appreciation. An unidentifiable scent wafts from Vriska, its flavor one of sulfur and smoke.

 

* * *

 

The compound fence encompasses a swath of area large enough to fit three more buildings its size, with a collection of trees bounded inside it. Part of the grounds are occupied by a square sand pit, where a group of trolls are sparring with spearkind. Around the east edge of the perimeter, the buildings cede to long expanses of grasses, dotted with pines and far enough from the compound that microphones and cameras from the building will fail to identify her.

She stops walking half a mile out from the building and turns left, beginning a walk around the perimeter. Her new wrist-mounted husktop burns a brand on her wrist. She hasn’t tried logging into her old Trollian account yet. She doubts Sollux’s network would let her, anyway. 

If she did, they’d be able to track her in an instant. Which is a pain, because her official Trollian account linked her to the legislacerative newsfeeds that would have information on the _Sound Judgment._ The public didn’t have access to those. She could know everything that had anything to do with the _Judgment’s_ wreck in twenty minutes, if she only had her old Trollian account and a secure connection. 

Maybe if she asked Feferi to get Sollux to set up a VPN — but even that wouldn’t be safe for long, and it’d put the whole base at risk. 

She puts her wristtop back in her pocket. The air is pleasant at this time of night. Walking keeps her blood moving, keeps her pan more or less still. 

A handful of trolls is sequestered near a gaggle of trees about a hundred feet from the fence. They don’t appear to be training, but are clustered in a semicircle around something on the ground. A fire flickers between them. When Terezi approaches, they regard her with varying degrees of wariness and hesitation; one of them, she notices, was among the trolls on the speedlift. 

“Morning,” she calls.

A few wave. They don’t seem to bear her any ill will. She veers off her target course to come nearer, curious.

“What are you doing?”

They huddle closer, consorting amongst themselves.

“I won’t tell,” she adds. 

Another moment of conference; one breaks the circle to beckon her. 

“Come and see,” he invites her, and she takes him up on it.

The material they’re burning is a heap of clothing, most of it black, with accents of burgundy. It doesn’t burn well. The smell of nylon-polyester blends going up in flames is an acrid, oily one, and the fire it generates is weak, at risk of dying from a sigh of wind. But from the collection of ashes scattered around their handmade pyre, it’s survived for a while yet, protected from the breeze by their circle.

“Whose is this?”

“Mariat Kivyes,” says the troll who invited her, a spindly wire-statue of a person with a shaved head and asymmetric snarls of horns. “Poor kid died about a week ago.” 

“Why are you burning his clothes?” 

The troll who had been on the speedlift tenses and shifts her jaw, but she lets the other troll do the talking.

“It’s a memorial.” 

“Oh.” Terezi pauses. “Is that the Sufferite way?”

“No,” says the troll from the speedlift. Her voice scrapes against her throat. “It’s Imperial.” 

“I didn’t know the Empire held memorials for non-nobility,” Terezi says, which is the most tactful way she can think of to say _It doesn’t._

“The Empire doesn’t hold them.” The troll does not volunteer more information. The troll who spoke first intercedes.

“If someone defects, within the infantry,” he says, “the tradition is for their unit to burn the belongings they leave behind.” 

“Ah,” she says. Although she tries to suppress the question in her tone, it emerges anyway.

“And if they die in the attempt, you burn the body.” The troll shrugs. “Didn’t have a body to burn, for Mariat. Had to make do.”

“I’m sorry for badgering,” she says, “but why would you burn their things?”

“To keep the legislacerators from getting their hands on it,” says the troll from the airlift. She levels her gaze on Terezi. “Can’t track a troll who didn’t leave anything behind.” 

That isn’t true, strictly speaking, but Terezi would sooner convert to the Mirthful Church than say that to her face. 

“And you burn the body . . . ?”

“To keep them from doing things to it.”

She speaks like she knows exactly what she’s talking about, with an old, quiet grief. 

“I’m sorry,” Terezi says. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

“Tanata,” the spindly troll says sharply. 

Terezi doesn’t know whether she’s talking about the mission or the rebellion. She doesn’t know that it matters.

The fire crackles as it devours a stiff pieces of wiring in one of Kivyes’ jackets. 

“Mariat was my moirail,” Tanata tells her. She watches Terezi as if expecting something.

“I am sorry for your loss.” Terezi clears her throat.

“Yeah.” Tanata averts her eyes.

“Tanata,” the other troll soothes, “give the legislacerator a bit of courtesy —”

“Courtesy,” Tanata murmurs, “would be slitting her throat right now instead of drawing it out.” 

“Hold on,” says Terezi, as the group explodes into a cacophony of anxious, discouraging exclamations. 

“It’s the Law of Blood,” Tanata insists, shrill, lifting her voice to be heard over her peers’ dissent. “It’s the Law of Blood. It’s her fault! It’s her _fault!_ It’s my right — let _go_ of me — it’s my right —”

“The Law of Blood is an archaic construct,” Terezi informs her, “which is not codified in any actual law.”

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter! Let _go_ of me.” She snarls something at one of the trolls holding her back in a dialect of Alternian so divorced from Terezi’s that she catches only a few words, most of which are profanity. “That’s the way things were in the Fleet. That’s the way things are, here.”

“I was under the impression you left the Fleet to revise its more barbaric practices,” Terezi says.

“This isn’t barbaric. This is civil.”

“It’s not my fault your moirail died. I _am_ sorry for your loss, and he did not deserve it, but it was not my fault.” 

“He wouldn’t have needed to go back if it wasn’t for you!”

“Or he might have gone back for someone else,” Terezi insists. “Or maybe, without me, the speedlift would have gone down. There are a number of universes where I did not come on that mission, and Kivyes died in some of them _anyway_.”

It does not satisfy Tanata. “But he died in _this_ one,” she snarls. “I claim justice in this one.”

“Then take it from the horrorterror. Your complaint is not with me.”

“I know who my complaint’s with. I’m owed one life, by the Blood, and I want yours.”

“You’re owed nothing,” Terezi tells her, low and clear. “And regardless of what you want, the law grants you nothing.”

Tanata steps forward. Terezi moves her cane in front of her, a preventative measure as well as a warning; Tanata has seen Terezi draw her sword before, and by her stiff flinch, she understands Terezi’s implication. 

“Threatening a legislacerator is a culling offense,” Terezi says, and in her mind this is not a threat so much as an informatory declaration. It still comes out cold, almost toneless. It freezes several of Tanata’s peers where they stand. 

“Are you going to cull me?” Tanata’s lips curl. “For talking _back_ to you, highblood? Legislacerator?”

“I’m not a highblood.” 

“Maybe not compared to the gamblignant. But you are to me.” She steps forward. “You think your important moirail is going to protect you? You think your blood means shit here? You think your degree means shit here?” 

“I think having a very sharp sword means shit here,” Terezi says, and then, “You would be ill-advised to try anything.”

“Why?”

“Because, all else being equal, in a fair fight, my odds are significantly better than yours. At present, where neither of the predicate conditions are fulfilled, your odds of emerging from that altercation unscathed converge to zero.”

Tanata retreats. Her arms curl around herself like a wriggler seeking the security of the chrysalis. “Leave,” she says. “Go.” 

The spindly troll with the odd horns detaches himself from the semicircle and steps between them. “I’m Gesetz,” he says, forcing a smile. “I’m Tanata’s auspistice. Can I walk you back to the building, Counselor?”

The group watches Terezi like she’s holding a grenade in one hand and its pin in the other.

“That would be agreeable,” Terezi says, slowly, and folds her hands behind her back. The cane shifts out of view, and several relax. Gesetz starts off for the compound, and it occurs to Terezi that Gesetz has offered not out of concern for Terezi’s wellbeing, but for the safety of his friends.

“I won’t hurt you,” she says. “Any of you. I’m on your side.”

“Then you shouldn’t have come,” Tanata says. 

Gesetz’s hand hovers over Terezi’s elbow and he urges her towards the compound. Terezi allows it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Gnawing on bishops, claw our way up their system_  
>  _Repeating simple phrases, someone holy insisted_  
>  _I want the markings made on my skin_  
>  _To mean something to me again_  
>  —Troll Twenty-One Pilots, _Doubt_


	15. Members of the Cruelest Bar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“The Condescension’s policy for keeping her Empire well-staffed was a simple one. At nine sweeps old, every troll took a government-administered placement test, which sorted them into one of several Imperial professions. Blood played a larger part in some assignments than in others; for example, the subjugglator corps, or any Church position, accepted trolls only from the purple caste, whereas the threshecutioner corps took all sorts. (See notes.) An individual’s preference was occasionally taken into account, but only insofar as their skillset aligned with their field of interest. Should a troll object to their placement, the officially designated avenue of complaint was to take a long dive out of a small airlock.”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

Weeks pass.

Time takes a look around, gets it shit together, and kicks into high gear. Chief Legal Consultant to the Movement for the Second Alternian Empire, it turns out, is a job with actual responsibilities, most of which she’s reasonably certain is just Karkat piling all the paperwork he doesn’t want to deal with onto her desk. On the bright side, she’s good at paperwork. 

Karkat is downright likable, once she gets to know him. He’s still ostentatious and irritating and easily set off, but she comes to find these traits endearing. She likes him. She thinks he likes her, too, although he shouts at his friends only marginally less than his enemies, so it’s tough to tell. 

She eats meals in the dining hall and gets used to grubloaf and tuber paste. It isn’t all that different from what she would eat most nights, aboard the _Pyrexia,_ but at least on the _Pyrexia_ it was a choice. Vriska continues to antagonize anyone and everyone within earshot, but she wouldn’t be Vriska if she didn’t, so Terezi chalks this up as an inevitability. 

Upon the one-perigee anniversary of their arrival, Kanaya gifts Terezi a box of red chalk and tells her that she has an office on the third floor with an enormous chalkboard for her to deface to her bloodpusher’s delight. Terezi almost kisses the woman then and there. 

(Kanaya is spared the indignity by Vriska, hovering at Terezi’s shoulder, in front of whom Terezi would feel uncomfortable kissing someone else for reasons she does not dissect because _oh would you look at that isn’t this office nice!)_

She gets to know some of the others. In particular, she comes to know the shabby excuse for a legal team that the Movement had up and running before now. They don’t really have anything to do except paperwork, most days, but Terezi keeps them on their toes by making them run through famous cases of Alternian common law and asking them to present arguments for either side. Over the course of weeks, they start to respond with actual arguments, rather than a haphazardly phrased “because that’d be bad” or “because that’s what H.O.T. said, right?” 

(H.O.T. standing for His Honorable Tyranny, as she explained after one of them collapsed laughing upon reading one of her case briefs. They never call him anything else again.)

She goes on resource missions with Aradia, when she gets sick of the interior of her office. They fly in to the outskirts of the Capitol and land by a grain silo filled with imported goods from offworld, and in small increments, take the packages marked with the Heiress’ symbol from the general stock. Aradia cracks jokes with her crew, and laughs more often, and moves around her ship with a comfort that Terezi never knew her to have aboard the _Pyrexia, Vagrant,_ or _Scourge._ She realizes that this is the first time since the very beginning of their relationship that she has seen Aradia happy, and doesn’t know how to feel about it.

(They don’t treat Vriska the same way they treat Terezi — insofar as they keep a distance around Vriska that they do not afford Terezi, and speak to her only when necessary. Terezi does not know whether it’s her ancestor that creates this barrier, or because Vriska has a natural aptitude for distancing herself from others. At any rate, Vriska does her best not to seem bothered by it. This is not to say she isn’t.)

On a nightly basis, Terezi ingests enough caffeine to induce cardiac arrest in most rodents. Sometimes she forgets the danger that she’s in, working as an active part of an anticasteist — _hemoegalitarian,_ that’s the word they use, here, hemoegalitarian — movement. Sometimes she doesn’t forget, but she delights in it, the adrenaline surges that catch her out of nowhere when she’s doing something mundane as filing an expense report. This is the most dangerous thing she’s ever done.

(Feferi, sometimes, does not seem to understand this. She receives news of lowblood deaths with a furrowed brow and pursed lips, and nods, with what seems to be mourning, but speaks too quickly afterward, and too soon changes the subject for Terezi to ever give her credit. She learned compassion for her peers from above them, not beside them.)

Hemocaste loyalty swings back, sometimes, and it’s like becoming aware of a piece of shrapnel lodged under the skin. Sweeps of conditioning do not fade easily from the thinkpan. When that happens, she leaves her desk, takes a walk around the compound, and finds Vriska.

(She and Vriska don’t talk about what happened to the _Sound Judgment._ Terezi comes back from her walk that night and holds Vriska tightly in their recuperacoon and doesn’t say a word, and Vriska holds her back and lets her stay silent. Neither of them know whether this is good moirail behavior, but it’s too early for them to risk tampering with the delicate engineering of their relationship, so they leave it be, and Terezi buries it while teaching her legal team how to recite statutes in Old Alternian.)

She goes on a mission to a town called Thrashthrust and half of their soldiers die. The half that survives itcomes back empty-handed, having failed to free the prisoners they went in to jailbreak, and Terezi for several nights cannot sleep without the image of dozens of Imperial soldiers cutting down her teammates with bullets and blades, warm-hued blood flowing onto the sidewalk in thick rivers. They all came in at once, rows upon rows, at least a hundred, far too many for a team of a dozen trolls to have a hope of beating. 

(She begins to feel — _something,_ for the revolution, aside from the knowledge that it is the only place she has left, and aside from the knowledge that it is, from a sheer logical standpoint, more ideologically sound than the Empire is. She can feel it twisting in her chest, like a creature pupating within its eggshell. Nowadays, when Empire loyalism stirs in her bloodpusher, another feeling rises up to meet it. Injustice has always tasted like bile to Terezi, and now, on the other side of the law, it is no different.)

She does not forget Mariat Kivyes. She makes arrangements for a memorial — and Karkat vetoes every one of them, because the number of people who have died for this revolution is greater than Terezi can conceptualize at first, and because he refuses to play favorites by putting up a statue or inscribing a plaque for the one whose death Terezi happened to be implicated in, thank you very much. She considers explaining to Tanata that she tried, but she understands that what Tanata wants is not a memorial, and it would seem condescending at best. So she doesn’t.

Karkat speaks to her about it only once. “You let it be,” he tells her. “I see this all the time. People don’t know how to grieve.” 

“I didn’t know there was a right way,” she says, and he says, “Give it a few sweeps.”

 

* * *

Terezi usually doesn’t get visitors in her office. If someone wants her, they send her a message, and her team knows well enough not to accost her with questions until they’ve done everything trollishly possible to solve the problem by themselves. Even if they had, she makes the experience of requesting her help sufficiently nightmarish that very few bother.

This makes the knock that comes on her door late the following night a surprise, and an ordeal for which she feels unprepared. 

“Come in.”

A hesitation. Then the door opens, and Tanata steps through, head high, lingering in the doorway. Her scent reveals little except anxiety, which is fair enough, given that Terezi shares it wholeheartedly.

“Evening,” she says. 

“Evening.” Terezi tilts her head. Casting about for something to say, she says, “How are you?”

“Good.”

“Good.”

Tanata closes the door. Locks it.

Terezi sets down her databook.

“I heard you got a promotion,” Tanata says. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” Terezi lets her hand rest on her cane, which leans against her chair. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I thought I’d come and talk.”

“And your mission has already been accomplished. Better trolls dream of being so efficient.”

Tanata wanders over to the threadbare bookcase. “Are these yours?”

“No. I’m new to the position, I’m afraid.” 

“Do you know who you took it from?”

“The position is new itself. Karkat hasn’t fired anyone because of me.”

“Karkat,” Tanata repeats. 

She shouldn’t have referred to him by name; she doesn’t even do that to his face. It’s how she talks about him with Vriska, and the misstep is lazy, and she curls her hand tighter around her cane at the look on Tanata’s face upon hearing it.

“General Vantas.”

“Are you on a first name basis?”

“Apparently,” Terezi says, aware that it isn’t her best deflection to date.

“Oh.” Tanata moves forward and leans on the chair in front of Terezi’s desk.

Terezi leans back and forcibly relaxes.

“I was talked to Gesetz,” says Tanata. “About Mariat. I’d like to apologize for my actions, during the burning ceremony. They were uncouth.”

“Uncouth,” Terezi repeats. 

“Yes. You didn’t need to hear that. I’m sure it was traumatic for you, as well. Thinking you were about to die.”

The conversation teeters on the edge of sincerity, but it doesn’t get there. Terezi recognizes a liar when she hears one. She stands up, and Tanata takes a step backward, and that tells Terezi all she needs to know.

Her grip on her cane shifts. It’s a movement that no one should notice, in conversation, but Tanata does — her eyes dart to it, and then avert, quickly — and Tanata knows what the canesword is, has seen Terezi use it.

“It was very unpleasant,” Terezi agrees. “However, I do not have time to discuss it. I am late for a meeting with the General.”

She steps forward to pass Tanata, and the troll holds out an arm to stop her. Terezi keeps her head pointed towards the door, and only slightly inclines it to acknowledge Tanata. This is a trick she learned a long time ago: if you don’t need to look at people to watch them, where you point your eyes becomes a matter of respect alone. 

“Pardon,” she says politely.

“I always wondered,” Tanata says, “how you manage to get around without running into anything. Seeing as you hardly ever use that cane for what it’s actually for.” 

“I use my cane for exactly what it was made for.”

Not even a guise of civility remains. Tanata’s tone is openly hostile, and Terezi waits for her to strike. She expects a punch, maybe a slap across the face. She wants to inflict pain, but she can’t be stupid enough to want Terezi dead. She would be the prime suspect in the subsequent investigation. 

“Doesn’t answer my question,” Tanata points out.

“No?” Terezi takes off her glasses and sets them delicately on the bookshelf. No use in breaking them.

When she turns her oculars on Tanata, the troll flinches. Good. Showing fear is a surrender in its own right.

“The Handmaid taught me,” she says, tone bright and chilling. “Are you going to let me leave my office?”

“Mariat was a good person,” says Tanata, and Terezi braces herself.

“I’m sure he was.”

“He was a _good_ person.” She lowers her arm. “He wouldn’t have thought violence was the answer. He was good at pacifying me. I really, really loved him. Do you have a moirail?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think you would do, in my position, Counselor?” Tanata cocks her head. “Would you let their killer go?”

Terezi suffers a brief, idiotic urge to just tell her the truth. It wouldn’t do any good. It would, in all probability, make things worse. But lying is exhausting, and it has never been her preferred method of deceit. 

“Mariat wouldn’t have wanted me to lash out at you,” Tanata adds. “He would have said that I should forgive you. Because it wasn’t your fault. Not directly. That’s fair. He would have got where you’re coming from.”

“He sounds like a reasonable troll.”

“Unfortunately,” she says, “he’s dead.” 

When she leaps at Terezi, it isn’t a punch or a slap or an open-fingered grab for Terezi’s throat, but a lunge, the blade in her left hand angled for Terezi’s jugular. Terezi unsheathes her canesword and knocks it away with the same momentum. The blow sends Tanata stumbling to one side.

Blades were not what Terezi was expecting. Of course, that was only an oversight on her part. She overestimated Tanata’s rationality, which she shouldn’t have, given the troll’s recent loss. However, even if she had known, Terezi isn’t sure what she could have done to prevent this.

When the next attack comes, she bats it away, and then counters with a probing sideswipe of her own, which Tanata leaps back from. She doesn’t appear to be carrying any weapons aside from her dagger. She was probably counting on the element of surprise. Perhaps she meant to sneak up on Terezi from behind? Or catch her without her canesword? 

Terezi wastes a full two seconds wondering what Tanata’s plan was before realizing that she probably didn’t have one; the irrationality that comes with grief does not lend itself to strategy.

Tanata stabs at Terezi’s leg and Terezi leaps over the chair, clearing it, sweeps her blade around to bite at Tanata’s ankle, forces a retreat. She receives a backhanded thrust to the chest as recompense, and parries, two light taps on the side of the blade, a teasing push. This isn’t a battle; it’s dancing.

“This isn’t worth it,” she tells Tanata, when the soldier pauses to catch her breath. She doesn’t attack, although if it were any other circumstance, the lull in combat would be a prime opportunity. “You can go now — I won’t tell anyone this happened. I won’t hold a grudge.”

Tanata’s reply is a sneer and a strike at Terezi’s navel which comes too close for comfort. Terezi shifts stances and engages, driving Tanata back towards the door, the longer reach of her blade easily making the art of deflection a difficult one for a troll wielding only a dagger.

She could have beaten Tanata within half a minute. She could have killed her within a quarter. Intimate combat was at the heart of her training; this is a game she has not lost in a very long time. 

Her blood is singing with it. Her blood is _thrilling_ with it. 

Tanata lunges again for her neck. Terezi slides her sword along the edge of the dagger and lodges her point into the hilt, twisting Tanata’s wrist until her hand spasms and drops it, then thrusting forward and cutting a clean line along a vein in her forearm. Blood wells from the cut and she doesn’t seem to notice, clawing at Terezi’s neck with her fingernails. Terezi shifts stances and angles the point toward her stomach instead. The fight thrums in her and she can feel it in her hands, in her skin, in the vibrating certainty of her body when it shifts and slides the blade dangerously close to Tanata’s navel, swiftly, easily.

Tanata pushes away the blade with her bare hand, nicks her palm on the honed steel, and makes a wild grab for the own hilt — unpredictable, dangerous, triggering an instinct curled up at the back of Terezi’s brain — and then Terezi’s moving faster than Tanata can flinch away and the barrel of a gun is shoved up against her neck.

When the soldier realizes it, she freezes. Slowly, she pulls her hand back from her sword. Terezi lets the point drop. 

Her finger is twitching over the trigger before she realizes what she’s doing and she drops her sword, quickly, taking a step backwards, pointing the gun at the ground. It is the gun Vriska gave her. This fact does not escape her. 

She lifts her other hand, palm-out.

Tanata stares at her wretchedly, clutching her bloodied arm to her chest.

“Get out,” Terezi says. 

It doesn’t seem register. Tanata keeps still as stone.

“Get _out.”_

She runs, flinging open the door and darting through it before Terezi can attach a warning to her reiteration.

Terezi takes her glasses from the bookshelf and slides them back on. Only when it takes her three tries to get them on properly does she recognize that her hand is shaking; only when she runs into the doorframe on her way out does she recognize her head is spinning. She manages to shut the door behind her when she stumbles into the hall, ignoring the looks cast at her by the trolls passing by; she runs the rest of the way to her quarters.

 

* * *

 

Terezi killed her first troll when she was six sweeps old. It happened in a hive three miles from her own.

Terezi sentenced her first defendant when she was nine sweeps old. It happened on a backwater moon in the Laetit system. 

Terezi culled her first troll when she was ten sweeps old, and on graduation day. 

Graduation, for the Ancient and Revered Alternian Academy of Law, was a small ceremony. Training did not lend itself to survival — not by any threat of death, but from its difficulty to pass. Only the select were allowed to graduate and become Neophytes, and the rest were either sentenced to a lifetime as a clerkiller or tried their hands at running away. Few succeeded. Often, as a source of amusement, Baristerrors would assign newly graduated Neophytes to the capture and sentence of their former classmates.

The Academy sat on a subarctic planet in the Deleo system. Most of it was underground, in order to avoid the costs of heating a few hundred members of a tropical species, but conditioning always took place above ground. Its atmosphere was so thin as to require breathing masks, and the gravity was twice Alternia’s; it was the least hospitable place possible to bring a crop of children into adulthood, and so by design. The Academy boasted of being the worst place its graduates would ever see hide of, and its legislacerators — smart ones, anyway — thanked it for the privilege.

Graduation took place aboveground, in a heated glass dome. Terezi’s class finished their term in the middle of a snowstorm, which meant all ships coming in and going off planet were stalled until conditions were sufficient to fly. 

The Magistragedy stood on a raised platform, perched behind an enormous podium. Kishar was younger, then, and looked it — having been appointed only a sweep earlier, she was fresh from a decorated career as a Baristerror, and wore the robes of a Magistragedy with the ostentatious pride that only the newly appointed can. The graduating students stood in neat rows before her, organized according to section block and class rank. Terezi stood at the front of hers. As valedictorian, she would be first to go onstage.

The students shuffled and whispered to each other and cooed over their new uniforms. Some wore the teal sash of a clerkiller. Others, like Terezi, sported the Neophyte’s jacket, signs sealed in red on their backs. Each had been given a swordstick for their graduation present, Calaman steel, dangling in a fine silver sheath. Terezi’s hung strapped to her hip like everyone else’s. Her elaborate canesword would be a gift from her mentor upon ascension to the rank of legislacerator, one sweep later. 

Kishar’s speech was something moving and poignant and more than a little sentimental, exalting the triumph of the Alternian Empire, praising the Heiress, et cetera, et cetera. The commencement speech never changed much. Terezi doesn’t remember much of it. Nobody was paying attention to the Magistragedy, anyway, except to marvel at her proximity. They were too busy ogling themselves, idling in either excitement or dread of their assignments to come, probably wondering to which legislacerator they would be assigned and where. Terezi can’t blame them. She was thinking the same. 

The speech concluded with a rousing cry of _“Praise her Condescension,”_ which the crowd echoed with great vigor and aplomb. Excited to get to the part that came next. Excited to get offworld, to catch a ride on a starship and never come back to that frozen shithole of a planet. 

Kishar cleared her throat and shuffled her notes. The Bar’s initiation vow was mere ceremony, nothing official, an ancient tradition kept in place by the professors’ affection for metaphor and circumstance. Kishar had expressed to Terezi herself on multiple occasions that she found the ritual distasteful, or at the very least, unnecessary, but Terezi invariably countered that it served to impress upon new initiates the seriousness of their vows. Promises made with blood, she said, always meant more than promises made with breath or ink. Then the Magistragedy would agree, albeit with disdain.

“I vow by the blood,” said the Magistragedy, standing under a dome painted sheer white from the force of the snowstorm outside it, her voice easily triumphing over the howl of wind. And the assembled graduates echoed, _I vow by the blood,_ their voices cacophonously out of tune, but earnest, and unified. 

“I vow by the law.”

_I vow by the law._

“I am a member of the Cruelest Bar.”

_I am a member of the Cruelest Bar._

“I live by the sword and the noose, and I die by the sword and the noose.” 

_I live by the sword and the noose, and I die by the sword and the noose._

“So it is until my last breath, fiat voluntas mea.”

_So it is until my last breath. Fiat voluntas mea._

Then the graduates drew their swords — several hundred lines of steel scraping against several hundred sheathes with the hasty clumsiness of several hundred students unused to the balance of the blade in their hands — and set the edge against their left arm, and drew. 

Terezi’s cut was clean, narrow, and shallow, done precisely. Not all were so skilled. Several, unaccustomed to a sworstick as sharp as Calaman steel, bit down to the tendon, resulting in more than a few hastily muffled shouts of pain. Blood wells from several hundred forearms. 

The Magistragedy did not deign to injure herself, but she did perform the requisite gesture: putting her fingers to her wrist, as if dipping them in the blood, and then drawing them across the neck, painting the line where the noose would sit on the gallows. Several hundred hands shook with pain and clumsily dabbed at their own wound, drawing the same. Then the Magistragedy lifted three fingers before her in the Alternian salute, and several hundred bloodied fingers followed her lead.

Terezi’s wound stung. She would not be allowed to use ointment on the cut, except alcohol disinfectant, to prevent it from festering; the intention was to leave a scar. Her last full-dermis molt happened half a sweep previous. She will carry a mark on her forearm for the rest of her life. 

In the moment, she breathed deeply of the scene, taking a good look around. Her pride swelled. The scent of blood did not bother her, or if it did, the knowledge that it was all drawn willingly ameliorated any discomfort. She was _happy._

She turned to the troll next to her, who she does not know — she hardly knows anyone from her graduating class, certainly not by face; the majority of her studies were undertaken alone — and said, “Congratulations,” because her bloodpusher was singing with joy and she needed to say it to someone.

He turned to her and his smile was thin, too toothy, lacking the rich scent of happiness to match it. “You, too,” he offers, and it trembles enough for her to take a second sniff. 

Nobody’s irises had come in yet. The physical signs of caste had barely begun expressing themselves, although having been surrounded by mostly tealbloods for the past sweep, Terezi would be the first to admit that her experience with identifying blood color left something to be desired. Nobody was significantly taller than anyone else, nor had most people come into close enough contact with anyone else to tell their hue by warmth. 

But no one else can smell blood. Terezi can smell it under the skin, dig beneath the layer of concrete grey and sample the taste of color underneath, when she comes close enough. It’s an ability that her Cullable Offenses professor wept for envy of, something that her principal told her would make her one of the best legislacerator of her generation, although she hadn’t understood how, at the time.

Now she understood, because the smear of sea-green staining her classmate’s neck and fingers reeked of _acrylic_ , acrid and fake, not like the rich, metallic teal on Terezi, on the troll at her other flank. And under the grey skin — bordering on black, puberty coming close to finishing its work — there was something bright and pungent and citrusy. Lime green. Bright enough to qualify as a blood mutation. Also also low enough to be considered an automatic disqualification from Bar membership, meaning he must have forged their way through the admissions paperwork. His lie represents a Class-C misdemeanor. His existence is a Class-A cullable offense.

He shifted away from her, almost imperceptibly. She had been facing him too long. This was a mistake; later, she will ditch the habit of looking at people while she studies them, and then will learn to think fast enough that it doesn’t matter, anyway. Now, she was still a Neophyte, still training in the art of the law. Not yet old enough to do what she does next without hesitation, not young enough to hesitate so long it gives him a fighting chance. 

“Pyrope,” he says.

She put her sword through his throat with a movement as natural as blinking. His scream was cut off by the sudden puncture of his windpipe. The trolls around her surged away as if flung by force, and several cried for help, which was met by the teachers present, who dart into the crowd with swords in hand. 

Terezi removed her sword and he collapsed entirely. She lifted the blade, stained with a green as bright as felony, and the legislacerators who had moved to seize her now retreated. She had to lift her voice to be heard without a microphone, but she was close enough to the front that the people who mattered could hear. 

“This troll is under arrest for crimes against the Alternian Empire and her agents,” she said. “He is hereby sentenced to death for blood mutation, employment fraud, perverting the course of justice, and heresy. All this I declare posthumously.”

The professor nearest her relaxed immensely. The declaration wasn’t perfect — the recitation of the right to notify a moirail, for example, was notably absent — but it was enough to meet the legal requisite for lawful posthumous arrest. Nobody moved to arrest _her,_ at least.

The body at her feet twitched. Rigor mortis seized it. The scent of limes drifted from the corpse in overpowering, pungent drifts, tempting her to cover her nose, but she elects not to out of respect for professionalism. Two senior legislacerators picked up the body by the ankles and the armpits and drag it off for disposal, or maybe dissection. She was never told what they did with heretics afterwards.

Someone clapped her on the back, with astounding tone-deafness. She let them.

“Cull posthumously authorized,” the Magistragedy says, with a curious undercurrent riding beneath her apathy. Terezi flinched and realized the woman was looking at her directly, _addressing her._

Giving thanks seemed the wrong option, so instead she nodded, wiped her blade on her sleeve, and sheathed it again. Teal and lime pool on the concrete next to each other, her own wound drizzling some of it beside the dead troll’s remains. It smells like a grotesque imitation of a bucket.

She dared to scent the air. Her classmates did not return to her side for the remainder of the ceremony. She was given a wide radius by most, although out of respect, not necessarily fear — she was not, even then, so naïve as to think both were not intimately entwined — and addressed with the most dignity that could have been expected by her professors, given their respective ranks. She was assured, in no uncertain terms, that what she had done was good and correct, and demonstrated an initiative and dedication to the law that would, if pursued, make her an excellent legislacerator. 

(And they will not be _wrong._ Not really.)

Two nights after the ceremony, she is assigned to the _Glorious Victory._ Magistragedy Kishar personally welcomes her onboard, and does not mention the limeblood, but also does not pretend that Terezi is here on her merits as a student and scholar alone. 

It is the first time Terezi _culls_. She takes a life at the behest of the law, from her understanding of the law, and by no authority but her own. It is not the last.

 

* * *

 

The lime caste does not exist anymore. Terezi sometimes wonders if she was the one who made it extinct.

Probably not; the widespread activities of the Bar in pursuit of hemocaste adherence were far more likely to have effected the result than any one execution could have been, and to presume that the troll next to her in line was the last limeblood in existence would be an egregious assumption.

All the same, she wonders.

Culling someone — the answer to Tanata’s question, which she could not summon when faced with it, and now regrets leaving unanswered — does not feel good, to Terezi. It doesn’t feel like anything. It didn’t feel like anything.

She hears the door to their quarters open and close. Vriska is probably back from her meeting. Now she hears the thump of her coat on the sofa, same place as always, and the dull landing that her bag full of databooks makes when it collides with the leg of the bitter bean fluid table. For a person so proud of her own unorthodox qualities, Vriska indulges remarkably often in routine. 

Magistragedy Kishar was smiling when they wheeled the limeblood’s body away, and Terezi never knew whether it was her own choice to have done it, or whether it was a sweep of instinct being drilled into her, if her hand was her own hand or if it was the hand of the law and whether it mattered, one way another —

It’s impossible to feel guilt for something inevitable. This, above all, was probably why they drilled the law’s inevitability into the heads of their graduates, impressed upon them the fact that justice always finds a way, and Terezi, idiot that she was, thought it was meant to be _inspirational_. 

The Bar took her in and laid claim to every inch of her and she gave it all to them, because she was a child and she didn’t know what she was doing and she didn’t know that she wouldn’t get any of it back, and even now, even after she’s left it and it will never, _never_ take her back she holds its sword in her hand and feels safe, feels something settle into place at the bottom of her heart. They have her blood and her word and her oaths and they have _her_. They always will.

She tears her glasses off her face and throws them on the floor, and then lifts her foot and brings down the bottom of her sole on the bridge, as hard as she can, snapping them. They break with the clear sound of glass crunching underfoot. 

Her cane she snatches up, braces it between two hands, and brings it down over the top of her knee. 

It flexes and bounces off the bone, too sturdy to break. She repeats it, again, and again, and each time it lays what she knows is going to be a big blue welt across the skin of her thigh, and again and again it refuses to break, curving into the shape of her leg with easy flexibility. A scream wells in her throat and she bites it down.

She rears back and flings it at the window, then, and it makes impact with a shattering _crack,_ sending spiderweb fractures splintering through the glass. It clatters to the ground and rolls a few feet with leftover momentum, completely unscathed, save for a long scratch running over one of the dragon’s eyes.

The door flies open and Vriska bursts in, gun in hand, hackles raised, prepared for a fight. “What the hell kind of —”

She stops when she sees Terezi. Terezi’s breath is coming in ragged bursts. She can feel blood pulsing under her skin and it belongs to the Bar, her lungs are heaving and they belong to the Bar, and her glasses are lying snapped on the ground and they belong to the Bar, and she wants to break something that belongs to the Bar and if she can’t reach anything else then she’ll have to do. 

Terezi sinks to her knees. Vriska drops her gun on the ground and dives to catch her before her head strikes the floor; Terezi feels limp and woozy. Her eyes are burning. They haven’t done that in a while. Had she ever cried, actually cried, after becoming blind? She can’t remember. 

“Hey,” Vriska says, kind of gentle, kind of not, “what the fuck is going on?”

She notices Terezi’s glasses and stares. “What happened to your —”

“I decided a change of style was in order,” Terezi says, and then starts laughing, which is at first pleasant, because it’s infinitely more enjoyable than crying, but then panics, because she can’t stop, and her lungs keep hacking and choking on peals of laughter that she cannot suppress and her body shakes and wheezes and she’s pretty sure she’s dying.

“Whoa,” says Vriska, “okay, Terezi, all right, just — hold on — Jesus, babe, breathe, you’re going to pass out.”

Terezi seizes onto the command and obeys it. She exhales and forces herself to wait three seconds before breathing in again, inhales, waits three seconds, and lets it go. Her pulse returns to something like normal. 

“Tanata,” she says, “you know — his moirail —”

“Shh. Yeah, I know her. Come on, now, calm down, shh.” 

“She tried to kill me.”

Vriska’s face hardens for a second, but she seems to realize the most pressing problem is _not_ avenging the attempt, and eases. “Okay,” she says. “Did she land a hit?”

“No.”

“Right. Figured, but I had to ask, insult as it probably was.” Vriska’s hands hang hesitantly at her sides before settling on Terezi’s elbows, in what has to be the most awkward pale embrace of Terezi’s life. “So, uh.”

She’s clearly begging Terezi to pick up the slack and explain what went wrong, but Terezi can’t actually make herself explain, at the moment, given that she’s having trouble thinking in the first place. 

“I’m sorry,” Vriska says, in a rush, “but, like, I really don’t know where to go with this? I don’t know if she did something to you, or said something that got to you, although I don’t know what that would be. And I know you don’t like the mind . . . stuff, so I can’t — this isn’t —”

It doesn’t make sense; this is uncharacteristic of Terezi, and Terezi knows it.

“I almost killed her.”

This, too, isn’t enough for Vriska. “Okay,” she says, straining to understand. “I’ll . . . fuck. I’m sorry. I’m not good at this.”

“You’re doing fine.” 

“Okay. Good. Great! So if you could maybe . . . just talk it through? Maybe? Uh, and then I could. Get an idea of how to hit this one.” 

It’s a hilariously mangled sentence and Terezi loves her for it. She says, “I almost killed her and I almost couldn’t stop myself.” Coherence returns in small increments. Her brain takes a brief jaunt through rational territory, finds the weather not to its liking, and backflips back into white noise without warning. She screws her eyes closed and sets her jaw and tries to think of neither lime green blood nor brown dripping from her canesword. It fails spectacularly. 

Vriska tilts her head. “All right,” she says, guarded. “She attacked you, though.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

“Uh, but hear me out: yeah? Yeah, it is. And I’m not talking, like, Mindfang Code, blood vengeance kind of thing, I’m pretty sure that’s a valid legal argument. Under Imperial statute, like. Battery triggers the right to self-defense.” 

Terezi lifts her head and squints at Vriska. Her bemusement knocks the panic clean out of her thinkpan. “That’s correct,” she says. “How the hell do you —”

“The subject of one of Karkat’s disciplinary meetings,” she says, waving it away, “had to figure out how to deal with some poor fuck who got jumped by a pal as a joke and psionic’d him through a wall. Not important.”

“Right.” Terezi nods. “Regardless, I — that isn’t a defense for me.”

“Yes, it is. _Especially_ for you. You live and breathe the law, Counselor, I think you’d pail it if you could.”

Vriska doesn’t know the ground she’s treading on, and so Terezi doesn’t resent her for the way the joke makes her flinch. She does, however, curl in on herself tighter, causing Vriska to shuffle forward in concern.

“I’m serious! You didn’t do anything wrong. Hell, if you _had_ killed her, you wouldn’t have done anything wrong. It’s not like — it’s not like what I did, you had a good reason and it was saving your own ass, she tried to fuck you up and you took action to prevent her. Name one person who would look at that situation and fall down on her side.”

_“Me,”_ Terezi says. “I would! I am better than that! I _have_ to be — I have to be better than —” 

Her throat closes up, and she cuts herself off with an angry noise. Her claws bite into her temples and grip, trying to reorient herself through the pain. She hates this, she hates feeling weak and she hates having to stop talking for fear of her voice tripping on tears and she hates feeling like she’s about to vomit pure bile because she hasn’t eaten in hours. 

“All right! Noted! Noted,” Vriska says, who clearly disagrees on a fundamental level but says she doesn’t because she thinks it will calm Terezi down. She closes her hands around Terezi’s and pries them away from her head. “It’s okay. Quiet. Come on, Terezi, it’s all right. Go on and shh.”

Terezi clings to Vriska’s wrists so hard she can feel tendons shifting under her fingers. The tips of Vriska’s knuckles are turning white from blood deprivation.

“Kind of hurting me,” Vriska says matter-of-factly, because she has never been characterized by an abundance of tact, “which, you know, okay, if that helps you to calm down, that’s what helps, I get it, but if there is a way that you could chill out a little with the death grip, I would very much appreciate it if you could find it in your heart to go that route, instead.” 

Terezi laughs, a wheezing gasp of a thing, and lets go. She lets go entirely, in fact, and rocks back on her heels, sitting down on the floor.

“I,” she says, slowly, testing her momentary stability, “pride myself on precision.” No disturbances so far. Good. “That means that I am capable of self-control to a degree that my peers are not.” Kind of arrogant. Didn’t mean to say it that way. She perseveres. “And I am beginning to think that I have never been precise, and just have never really had to restrain myself before.” There. The truth crawls out of her and rings in her ears.

“Of course you’re precise,” Vriska scoffs. “You kept yourself from killing me.”

“Repulsive as it may be to your sensibilities,” Terezi grits out, “this is not, actually, about you.”

It silences her. Terezi immediately feels guilty for it.

“I’m sorry,” she offers, which really doesn’t make up for it, but it gets Vriska to shift closer again, so she considers it a temporary fix to a problem she’ll get back to later and lets it be.

“No, it’s fine. You’re right. Not about me. Although, uh. If you could explain how it’s different from my case, I think that’d help me to get what you’re hung up about.” 

“It’s different from your case,” Terezi explains, “because you are my moirail. You were my palecrush. My ability to not kill you was borne of unique circumstances; it was not a remark upon my general capabilities as a legislacerator, or as a person.”

“You weren’t pale for me from the outset.”

“And then, I had an order from the Magistragedy to leave you alive. I had commandment keeping me on the ball. None of that matters. My regard for others’ lives should not _need_ to be mediated by legal or sentimental rule. Knowing that I _should not kill people_ should be damn well sufficient!”

“And it was.”

“And it almost _wasn’t,”_ she snaps. “That’s the problem.”

Vriska nods and rubs Terezi’s back.

By and by, she says, “I trust you, you know.”

“I know you do.”

“Do you? Because, like,” she says uncomfortably, “you kind of act like not being perfect is going to make you an awful person. Specifically, it’ll make _you_ an awful person, because it’s not a standard you seem to apply to anyone else.”

It’s a shockingly cutting point. Terezi accepts it in stunned silence.

“So I thought you should hear it. Even if you already knew.” Vriska shrugs. “I trust you. I think you’re a good person. I don’t give a fuck if anyone else does, and frankly, I don’t think you should, either. If you _almost_ not making the right decision for once in your life makes you a piece of shit, I shudder to think what that makes me.” 

“That’s different.”

“Shouldn’t be,” Vriska counters. “All trolls are equal, right? That’s the Kool-Aid we’re drinking? All right, fine, but you gotta run with that shit. All the way down. You’re no different from anyone else, least of all because you got a law degree. And that means, when you fuck up like anyone else, you get off your ass and forgive yourself like anyone else.”

“Is that what you do?” It escapes before Terezi can catch herself. It sounds accusatory, but she meant it as a genuine question, which is how Vriska seems to receive it.

“Sometimes,” she says.

“And when you don’t?”

“Pretend,” says Vriska, as simple as anything. “Until you manage the real thing.”

Terezi draws her pistol from her jacket and holds it out to Vriska. “Take it back,” she says. “Please. I don’t want it.”

“I — look, if you’re sure, but you don’t need to, like, disarm yourself or something. You’re not a danger to me, or to anyone else under this roof. I trust you.” 

“Please take it back.”

Vriska does, but she sets it on the pile instead of strapping it into one of her holsters. “All right,” she says. “I’m beginning to think we should have talked about the _Sound Judgment.”_

“We did.”

“Talk about it more, then. Talk through it. You have a . . . a tendency to feel guilty about shit that isn’t your fault, and I don’t know why and I don’t know how often you do it without telling me, but it’s fucking you up internally and I won’t stand for it.”

“You won’t.”

“No! Like, I dunno. Your relationship with the Bar is a can of worms that I’m honestly afraid to touch. It’s such a big can that it’s actually transcended ‘can’ status and been promoted to ‘gallon.’ It’s a gallon of worms. And God knows neither of us have the stamina to dump it all out on the table today. But, like, maybe cracking the lid open? And maybe considering that, like, it’s probably fucking you up on this particular issue? Not a terrible idea.”

“My relationship with the Bar is not a _can_ _of worms_.”

“Like hell it’s not.” 

Terezi tenses, and makes herself release. “Why,” she asks, “do we always end up fighting, when we try to have a feelings jam?”

“To be fair, we are both very confrontational people.” 

“Granted.” Terezi rubs her neck. “Everything used to be very simple,” she says. “It used to be very clear.”

“Before . . .”

She doesn’t answer. Vriska knows. 

“Yeah.” Vriska rubs her eyes, and says, “Yeah, it did used to be, didn’t it.” 

“I wish I could go back.” Terezi doesn’t mean that, and she doesn’t know why she can’t make herself take it back. Or, rather, she doesn’t mean the implication she knows Vriska is going to take from it, but she does not know how to explain that, either. “I would retire. Find a nice home on a planet far away from Alternia, and settle down. Find a matesprit. Fill a bucket. Not die soon.” 

“Are you not . . .” Vriska struggles for words. “I know that _happy_ probably isn’t the word for it, but, like. Is this not what you wanted to be doing?”

“I don’t know what I want.”

“Do you not like the Movement?”

“I don’t like it or dislike it. I need to be here.” 

“Do you want to leave?”

“No!”

“Okay, well, then, what do you want to —”

“I am _tired,_ Vriska,” she says. “I am tired of people dying. I am tired of violence. I am tired of a hemocaste system that is going to keep killing people unless someone does something about it. I am very tired of not knowing how to feel about anything; I want to go somewhere where everything is quiet and never have to decide whether or not someone lives or dies again, and that is not something you can make happen, so I would advise you to make your peace with it, as I am attempting to do.” 

Vriska is quiet for a long time. Then:

“Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”

She lets go of Terezi and reaches for the pistol, which she presses back into Terezi’s hands. “Here,” she says, earnestly. “Take it. If you don’t want to use it, fine, carry it without ammo or something. Just to make me feel better.” 

Terezi wraps her fingers around the barrel. It seems to satisfy Vriska; she leans back. 

“You’re a good person,” she says.

“I appreciate the sentiment.”

“Yeah. Well.” Vriska stands up, offers her a hand, and pulls her to her feet. “I’m right.” 

“Thank you.”

Vriska nods, and smiles, a slip of an expression that slides off her face as soon as it appears. She picks up her cane from where it lies and hands it to her. Terezi accepts it, hefts it in her hand, and lets it rest at her side.

Vriska says, “There you are,” and it’s hollow. If guilt flickers over her face, Terezi cannot say.

 

* * *

 

Terezi wakes up early that morning to cold sopor.

Not so cold that she couldn’t tell there was once another troll in it — ten, fifteen minutes gone, by its temperature, but Terezi hasn’t studied thermodynamic change since the Academy, and forensic science was never her interest — but colder all the same, and _empty,_ with only Terezi in a cupe that now seems luxuriously big. Startling awake, she sits up and rubs the slime from er nose. 

The clock on the wall blinks 7:27, which means the sun is just coming up, although probably not yet risen. There is a light coming from under the ablutionblock door, and shadows flickering under it. Vriska probably went to use the loadgaper. Terezi relaxes.

The door opens and Vriska steps out. Terezi dives back beneath the slime and lets her face slacken with the image of sleep. Noise is muted through the sopor, but she can still hear Vriska puttering around the room, trying to be quiet, and failing miserably. She collects her overcoat and holsters, slinging both over her back, and creeps toward the door on the toes of her feet so her boots don’t click on the hardwood. Terezi holds her breath for as long as she can to avoid intaking sopor and falling asleep by accident. When the door closes, she gets up.

Moving quickly, she sheds her sleeping clothes and dresses in one of the uniforms provided. She grabs her cane and darts out the door after Vriska without remembering her glasses, but it doesn’t matter. If she waits, she’ll be too far behind to track her.

Following Vriska is not difficult. She lingers behind corners, and since she doesn’t need to look around them to _see_ where Vriska is going, she always puts a wall or two between them. Always steps with the flat of her shoe instead of the iron-laced toe or the sharp heel, holds her cane in front of her to avoid knocking into anything and causing a noise. Terezi can move in almost perfect silence. It’s a skill she developed out of necessity.

Vriska takes the stairs to the ground floor of the compound — not the elevators, Terezi supposes, because those would make noise — and Terezi follows her, trembling with the effort not to put down her cane and steady herself on dozens of steep ledges, because the echo of the point connecting with concrete would tell Vriska immediately that someone is following her.

She does not ask herself where Vriska is going, and why, at this time of the morning. 

Vriska gets to the ground floor and walks across the hallway with more comfort, now she’s left the residential areas. Her heels clatter on the tile. The light, dimmer now during the daytime, plays softly across her face, across her hair, a warm yellow catching the black leather of her overcoat and gleaming. A guard leans against the hallway of the main entrance and he notices her coming, standing up straight, tightening his grip on the spearkind weapon he carries.

“Hey,” he says, half evaluation, half casual greeting. “Where are you headed?”

Vriska doesn’t answer, but keeps approaching.

“Ma’am?”

In one fluid movement, she knocks him upside the head with the butt of her pistol, dealing a blow that sends him sprawling. He collapses to the ground, eyes closed, with what will eventually become a bruise flowering on the side of his jaw — knocked out, but not dead. Vriska holsters her pistol and passes through the door.

Terezi follows.

The air is comfortably warm. The wind runs a gentle finger through her hair. The courtyard is empty as a graveyard at noon. Nobody wants to be outside, exposed, with sunrise so near, and the light gathering on the horizon offers a grim deadline to Vriska’s trip. Terezi catches the cherry-red scent of it, and she almost quails and runs back inside.

Vriska keeps an even pace as she walks up to the gate, enters a code in the key panel, and waits for it to slide open just enough for her to slip through.

Terezi does not go back inside. She steps up to the gap and stays there long enough to smell Vriska stooping at a large rock lodged under a clump of trees next to the gatepost, pulling out a satchel, a stack of databooks, and the large, square key fob to the _Scourge._

Rising, she turns around and casts a glance over the compound. Terezi ducks back behind the gate and focuses on taking even breaths. 

Then Vriska sets off.

Terezi clings to her cane and determinedly does not imagine, and does _not_ imagine, and does not imagine, until she does. She leans around the gate and gets another long taste of the situation to convince herself that she has hallucinated the whole thing, that her good old nose is finally failing her after so many sweeps of dutiful service. 

Vriska has made it to the bottom of the hill, and she keeps her pace, striding off in the direction of the hangar. Her satchel sways at her side and she moves with a purpose, never looking over her shoulder, with a steadfast and untroubled step. Her lack of doubts burns Terezi. 

She finds herself breaking into a sprint, slipping through the narrow gap in the gates and darting over the hill. Her legs quickly start to burn from the effort. Her boots slip and over wet grass, sinking in the mud, and her balance suffers for her speed. The noise she makes is unmistakeable; Vriska will have noticed her, now.

“Hey,” bursts from her throat. “Hey. Hey!”

Vriska wheels on her heel and pales with horror, freezing in place. “Terezi,” she says. “What —”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Terezi is loud and she doesn’t care, making a scene and she doesn’t care. She skids to a halt mere feet from her, chest heaving. “Are you — you can’t be —”

“Just slow down, okay, and we can talk about this.”

“You’re running away.”

“I know you think —”

“After this long,” she says. “After all your opportunities to — do you know how much I gave up for you? How much I fucking _lost?_ In order to make sure that _you_ survived, that _you_ walked away? It wasn’t for me! It sure as hell wasn’t for the law! It was all because of — I thought —”

“Terezi —”

“I thought you were different!”

Vriska’s jaw snaps shut.

“I was delusional, sure, but I did! I thought you were a good person, under everything else, and even if you weren’t, you were close enough that you and I could do something _good._ And you didn’t — none of that occurred to you? You didn’t even care enough to say — to _pretend_ you cared enough to say goodbye?”

She spreads her arms. Her pusher is hammering and her head pulses like it’s on fire and she feels numb-cold- _boiling_ with fury. “After everything,” she demands. “After everything. After all of it, you’re _running away.”_

“No.”

“What else could you be doing?” She gestures to the satchel. “With a handful of private databooks, and the keys to the hangar. Going for a noonday stroll?” 

“I was — fixing things.”

“I’m sure,” Terezi seethes. “I’m _sure_ you were. I’m sure things would be just fucking _fantastic_ if you got to fly away to some rich corner of the universe and wait for the Empress to kill anyone who could hold you accountable. That really would fix everything for you, wouldn’t it?”

“That’s not —”

“No more nagging moirail! No more life-threatening missions! No more bullshit anticasteist rebellion that you never really believed in, because, well, really, _blue isn’t a bad place to be!”_

“You don’t understand!”

“Don’t try that. Don’t you — _don’t_ try that. I understand everything. I understand you were going to sneak out without telling anyone, without telling _me —_ fuck you for that, by the way — and sell out _everyone_ for a handful of aureii and immunity, and leave me behind wondering why for the few _nights_ I get left before the Fleet comes running to wipe this building off the face of the planet!”

“That’s not what this is.”

There is something horrid in Vriska’s voice, low, anger tempered by resentment, a hard barrier between what she says and the sentiment rolling off her in thick waves of scent. Terezi has not heard it directed at her for a long time and it makes her almost incoherent with rage. So she does something very unwise.

She draws her sword, and Vriska’s eyes widen. She takes a step back, hand going to the holster on her hip, and Terezi angles the tip at the soft of her throat. She freezes. 

“How long were you planning it?” It’s wrested out of Terezi as a whisper. “Since you heard the announcement? Since before?”

“Terezi,” Vriska says carefully, watching the end of the sword, “put it down.” 

“Since we landed? Since the _trial?”_

“No. Not since then. Terezi? Terezi. I need you to put the sword down.” 

Terezi’s hand is shaking. The blade sways an inch closer to Vriska, retreats, wavers. “How long,” she demands. 

Vriska lifts her hands in the air, removing one from her holster. “Terezi,” she says, calm as still water. “Put the swordstick down. I won’t make a break for it. Just put it down.” 

Terezi stares at her for a moment.

Then her tip lags, drops, and lands in the dirt. She does not sheathe it, but she does not lift it, either.

“I don’t care if you faked all of it,” she says. Begs, although it sounds more like an confession than a request. “I don’t care if you didn’t mean a single damn word. If you never had an ounce of pale feeling for me in your life. You still owed it to me — you knew what I felt was real, and _you owed me_ an explanation.” 

“Yeah,” Vriska says, “yeah, okay. My bad.”

“ _Your fucking bad?”_

“Wrong choice of words — that’s not what I meant, you know it’s — I didn’t want to hurt — if I left and never explained anything,” Vriska spits, her words piling over each other in a jumble of urgency and regret, “you’d think I — you’d hate me for it, and you wouldn’t bother to — you’d be all right, without, but I couldn’t — if I explained anything to you you’d talk me out of it and I _couldn’t_ be talked out of it, I couldn’t, I needed to do this and I _need_ to do this and if I told you you’d tell me not to and I _wouldn’t.”_

“You’re not making sense.”

“I’m not betraying anybody,” she says. “I wouldn’t — I know you don’t have any reason to believe me when I say ‘I wouldn’t,’ especially given what you think I’ve just done, but I wouldn’t and I haven’t. 

“These are forgeries. The databooks? You can look.” She pulls them from her satchel, practically flings them at Terezi in her rush to hand them over. “They’re not real. They’re falsified. One says the Movement is headquartered on an Andalusian moon, and another one says the main source of funding is a banking clan from the Squamiger System. One of them says that the Signless-Sufferer doesn’t have a descendant, that he’s just an urban myth. And one of them —”

The top databook is a full account and record of Terezi Pyrope’s death. 

“This is my death certificate,” says Terezi, numbly.

“Yeah.” Vriska exhales, shaky. “I learned how to do one up when I had to ditch one of my aliases. It’ll pass any test the Bar can fashion up for it.”

“You forged my death certificate.”

“Right, and there’s one underneath for Aradia, too, if you look — her C.O.D. is a psionic accident, and yours is impalement — I said you got culled by a subjugglator. Would’ve done Kanaya, too, but I don’t know her wriggling day, and they might not even know she exists, so.” 

“Why did you forge my death certificate.”

“Because they don’t put _warrants_ out for dead trolls.”

Vriska shoves her hands in her pockets and stares at the ground.

Terezi slowly hands over the databooks. Thoughts flicker through her mind like electricity dancing over a wire cage, sporadic and inconcrete. “What, exactly,” she says, “were you going to do with these?”

“Look,” Vriska bites out. “The Bar and the Church are tearing each other apart. They’re doing that because they blame each other for us escaping. That means if I turn myself in to the Bar, they don’t hand me over to the Church, because they don’t want to give them that kind of satisfaction. So I’m left in the hands of a bunch of lawbugs who, while probably chomping at the proverbial bit at the chance to cull me, aren’t just going to beat my head in the minute I walk through the door. That gives me time to deliver _these —”_ She gestures with the databooks — “to whoever’s in charge of handling my case this go around, and act like I thought I was gonna get a plea bargain out of them.” 

“The Bar does not afford plea bargains.” It feels like there’s cotton wadded at the back of her mouth. 

“I know that. But they don’t know I know that.” 

“And then,” Terezi says, neutral, “and then what happens to you? After that.”

Vriska pauses, shrugs. “Escape, if I can.” 

“If you can?”

“I’m pretty good at it.” 

“The Bar has lost you once. It will not leave a second opportunity.”

Vriska purses her lips, seems to think for a moment, and shrugs again. 

“They will kill you. If they catch you.” The logic that usually flows naturally to Terezi’s tongue now falters, and asserts itself only in short, inconclusive fragments. 

“Yeah. Probably.”

“Did you even think that you _could_ escape?”

“I hoped,” she says. “I mean, I had to hope, otherwise I probably couldn’t have talked myself into doing it. Self-preservation instinct’s hard to kick.”

“You knew you were going to your death. You knew, and you did it _anyway?”_

“Yeah,” Vriska says, beginning to frown. “I don’t know what — look, I thought you’d be proud of me.” 

_“What?”_

“This is — this is what you said I should do.”

“You had better start making sense very, very soon —”

“I’m doing something selfless!” Vriska flings open her arms. “This is the kind of thing you do all the time! With the — the self-sacrificing bullshit, and the martyrdom! You were right. About shitty circumstances, and altruism, and being a hero. You said people could always — could always choose not to be a bad person — so this is me, _choosing otherwise!”_

Silence drops between them like a corpse from the gallows. Vriska, breathing hard, shoves the databooks back into her satchel and steps back. 

“I don’t want you,” Terezi says dangerously, “to be a martyr.” 

“Sure,” Vriska says, “obviously, but it’s not about the martyrdom so much as it’s —”

“I don’t need you,” she says, approaching, “to be a martyr.” 

“I — okay, sure, you never said anything, but you deserve —”

“I never needed you to be a hero.”

“That’s what —”

“I never asked you to. Nobody ever asked you to. Least of all me.”

“Fuck! Fine! I don’t have a clue what you wanted and never will!” Vriska bursts out. She’s practically spitting into Terezi’s face; Terezi hasn’t stopped her approach, and they’re close enough to share the same oxygen, now. “So what the hell do you want from me, if it’s not me being a good goddamn person?”

“To be my fucking _moirail!”_

And then Terezi, perhaps inspired by the theme of the evening, does something very stupid. She grabs Vriska by the shirt and hauls her down and kisses her. 

It’s not pale. It’s not even the vaguely uncomfortable grey area between pale and its neighboring quadrants, where she could justify it as reasonably falling within the bounds of the diamond quadrant. Terezi kisses Vriska with her teeth and her tongue, her claws curling into the fabric of her collar and ripping it, drawing dark blue to the skin of her lips. 

In juxtaposition with her earlier statement, it is not, per se, an eminently logical continuation of the pale solicitation issued a few seconds earlier. Terezi, however, is not feeling inclined to an eminently logical mood. 

She releases Vriska and jumps back, leaning on her sword for balance. Vriska remains tilted over for a moment before straightening up, a bright cerulean coloring the tops of her cheeks, lips parted.

“Uh,” she says. “Um.”

“We are not going to talk about this,” Terezi tells her, with a tone like steel. “I will tell you what we are going to do. I am going to talk you out of this idiotic suicide mission you have orchestrated for yourself, as you feared I would, and we are going to go inside, and you are going to sleep on the couch, and we are not going to talk about this. And tomorrow, we will report to General Vantas’ office, together, to explain your absence from the debrief this morning, and we are not going to talk about this. And if, at any point, you feel inclined to talk about this, I will not know what you are talking about, because as far as I am concerned, the thing that just happened did not just happen, and, indeed, will never have happened. Am I clear?”

“Um. Crystal.” 

“Good.” 

She says, “If you go right now, I will call Karkat Vantas and tell him you are on your way to sell us out for everything we’re worth. He will send ships after you. Regardless of how fast _Scourge_ can fly, with a crew of one she will be doing nowhere near maximum speed, and he will catch you. Then you will be brought back to the compound in chains, kept in a locked cellblock until such a time as he can be persuaded you are trustworthy, which will likely be never. He will blame me for your stunt and I will be punished by a demotion to private, if not expelled entirely, and the chances of us meeting again within the next sweep are close to nil. If you are amenable to that outcome, by all means.” She holds out a hand. “I will not stop you.” 

Vriska says, “Pyrope —” All rough and wretched, like she’s trying to play on Terezi’s pity for her, pull at the strings of her bloodpusher until she lets her go. It won’t work.

“Or,” Terezi says, “you can come back inside. And we will not tell anyone that this happened.”

“Let’s talk about this,” Vriska coaxes.

“We have.” 

Terezi turns around and starts walking back to the compound. “Do what you want,” she calls. “You know what I’ll do.”

She doesn’t turn her head to watch Vriska, or taste the breeze for her scent. The air begins to swelter as the light on the horizon brightens and swells, a red star peaking over the hill crests. Sweat trickles down the back of her neck. The compound gate is still open.

Half a minute passes, and Vriska does not follow her. A minute passes, and Vriska does not follow her. Doubt flowers in the cracks between certainties like weeds in the sidewalk. 

Then a footfall behind her, Vriska falls into step, panting from having ran to catch up. Terezi slows her pace fractionally. If Vriska notices, she does not thank her, which is a courtesy in its own right. 

“Would you really have called Karkat?”

They pass through the gate. It slides closed behind them with a _clang,_ clear and final. 

A number of replies offer themselves to Terezi:

_You were very close to finding out —_

_—A pointless hypothetical, as its answer will never be realized—_

_Did you really think I could?_

“Gilber’s Second Rule of Intimidation,” she settles on, and nothing more. 

They move through the compound in silence. Few trolls are awake at this hour, except for the sanitarnation squad, who eye them with respectful wariness when they pass. Terezi knows the halls of the building better, now, well enough to use back hallways instead of the main ones and stairwells instead of the well-tread elevators. Nobody of importance notices that they’re out when they’re not supposed to be, and none will ever know they were.

Their quarters are dark when they return. Terezi doesn’t turn the light on, and takes a vindictive pleasure in Vriska stubbing her toe on the doorway, and then a gnawing guilt for enjoying it. She pauses in the common area and wonders how to explain to Vriska, without sounding cruel, that she cannot sleep in the same cupe as Vriska, tonight, or how to phrase it without sounding like the prelude to a breakup, or how to sound like this isn’t the shell-shocked aftermath of the same.

Vriska sets the satchel on the bitter bean fluid table. Terezi’s hand twitches toward it, and she restrains herself. She wants to seem like she trusts Vriska. She _does._

Understanding this — or, at least, understanding some variation of this — Vriska hands the satchel to Terezi. “Here,” she says. “You can keep it.”

Terezi takes it and nods her thanks. Neither picks up the exchange when it tapers off. 

“I never lied to you,” Vriska mumbles. 

“A lie in and of itself.”

“About being pale. I am. I have been ever since I first said it. And if you don’t believe me, then you can just, like, think about it. If I was gonna turn traitor, it would’ve been better policy to just stab you when we were in the cupe together and be done with it.” 

This is, frankly, macabre, and not the kind of thing that Terezi should find comforting. She does anyway.

“I may not have been thinking clearly,” she concedes, “when I thought you were leaving. However, it was the kind of event which lends itself to irrational suppositions.”

“I get it.”

“I don’t think you do.”

“I thought I was gonna watch you die, once.”

Terezi steps into the doorway of the respiteblock. Vriska does not try to enter. This is a relief, if nothing else.

“And I thought you betrayed me,” she says. “And if you really knew what that felt like, you’d understand why the two are not even remotely the same.” 

She closes the door. The sopor is cold, by now, but she slides into it anyway, leaving her armor in a pile by the side of the cupe. Vriska took her clothes with her, in her satchel; the pile and the closet are both naked of any of her belongings. The respiteblock looks like it belongs to Terezi alone. If it were not for the smell of Vriska pervading everything, Terezi herself wouldn’t be able to tell there had ever been anyone else living in it. 

She keeps her eyes open in the sopor and they sting, tearing up, a preemptive measure. After the sopor fails to put her out, she entertains herself by reciting the Fifty-Three Amendments to the Alternian Constitution, first in chronological order, then alphabetical. Then she does Vriska Serket’s dossier, chronologically, alphabetically. After this, she recites her own.

She is, in all likelihood, a bad person. It is not this particular revelation which robs her of sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Does it feel like a trial?_  
>  _Does it trouble your mind, the way you trouble mine?_  
>  _Does it feel like a trial?_  
>  _Now you’re thinking too fast, you’re like marbles on glass_  
>  —Troll The National, _Exile Vilify_


	16. Bonds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“The Alternian Empire allocated power in curious ways. The Empress must hold authority supreme over all others, of course, and none could be enabled to pose a serious threat; at the same time, only delegation could ensure that she retained the freedom to do as she pleased, unburdened by the tedium of day-to-day government. The official Senates for each of the twelve systems under the Empress’ rule are mere remnants of an early experiment in relegation of authority, albeit an unsuccessful one — with the realization that a Senate held functionally no power over its own public (that was awarded instead to the Imperial governors of each planet), the role of Senaterror devolved into nothing but a meaningless title, a tool to reward the upper castes and remind them of their divine right to rule.”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

To cut the tension in the briefing room would require something sharper than Calaman steel. 

Karkat sits at the head of the table. Kanaya reclines to his left, examining a databook with an intensity that suggests she’s not reading a single word, and Terezi takes up a place at his right. Vriska sits beside Kanaya instead of Terezi — she arrived ten minutes after Terezi did, and it was the only seat left. She is studiously not looking at Terezi. Terezi is studiously not acknowledging her.

Aradia is the only one talking, having a murmured conversation with the troll to her right. She sits on Terezi’s left. She had, previously, attempted to make small talk with Terezi, but after monosyllabic answers had abandoned the attempt. 

Terezi takes a sip from her third cup of bitter bean fluid and waits to stop feeling exhausted. She knows for a fact that there are dark rings under her eyes despite a technically healthy amount of sleep. She also knows for a fact that people are staring at them, and no matter how many glowers she tosses out, they will continue to stare as long as she keeps sulking. 

“I presume we’re waiting for something,” Kanaya says. It breaks the silence among those at the head of the table. Karkat looks like he could cry from relief.

“Transmission from the Heiress,” he says. “She’s supposed to be joining us tonight.”

“What for?”

“Mission brief. Dunno what’s so important that she couldn’t send it in a transmission, except Sollux is paranoid as hell about digital transcripts, so he might’ve convinced her to video call instead.”

“Rather inconvenient.” 

“Tell me about it.” He rocks back in his chair and rubs his eyes. “I haven’t talked to her for about a perigee. The last time she called, it was to warn me about the two horror stories she was dropping in my lap.” He waves vaguely to Terezi. “No offense.”

“None taken,” she says. “I would have been irritated, too.”

“Irritated puts it lightly,” Kanaya says, and buries her expression by taking a sip of tea.

“Hey,” Karkat says sharply, pointing a finger at her. “Hey. I was fine. I handled that shit admirably.”

“If by that you mean you almost had a screaming match with a political refugee in the middle of your dining hall, then by all means, yes. You did.”

“I’d like to see you do any better!”

“I did,” she says, now palpably amused. “I defused that particular situation, if you recall.”

“It didn’t need defusing.”

“I wonder if we are discussing the same horror stories.” 

He rolls his eyes. “Whatever. I had that shit on lockdown.”

“Said aforementioned shit was approaching the fan at terminal velocity. Your lockdown procedures may need to be revised for efficiency.” 

Karkat opens his mouth and only belatedly realizes that he doesn’t have a quip prepared, so instead he steals her databook and sits back in his chair, huffing. 

Terezi feels an unexpected pang of jealousy. She leans over to address Kanaya. “Are you,” she begins, uncertainly. Cuts herself off. “The two of you, are you —”

The Heiress’ crest blazes to life on the screen behind Karkat’s chair, accompanied by a blast of trumpets, and Terezi swallows her question. Several cabinet members flinch in surprise. The crest glows for a few seconds, and then vanishes, replaced by a widescreen feed of Feferi’s beaming face.

“Evening, folk,” she chirps. “How are you lovelies doing tonight?”

Karkat sits up straight and answers for the congregation. “Just fine,” he says. He covers his surprise admirably. “Evening, Heiress.” 

It’s not the correct term of address. _Majesty_ would be more appropriate, and Feferi seems to acknowledge the snub, her grin flagging. But she doesn’t admonish him, and summons her smile back almost instantaneously. 

“Excellently,” she says. “I’m glad to hear that everyfin is going well. Things are just great here,” she adds, unasked. “Things are swell. Solly says he’s sorry he couldn’t come to the call, but he’s busy with his husktop. He’s _glued_ to the screen. Anyway. The Light Season is coming up soon, over there, isn’t it? That ought to be rough. Less time to move around.” She shakes her head. “I hated the Light Season. Although underwater, it didn’t make much of a difference, I guess! Is that my Archagent?” She waves furiously. “Hi, Fishka!”

Vriska flicks her fingers in a bored wave. 

“And my legal consultant!” Feferi cranes her neck to address Terezi. “It’s good to sea you. It seems like it’s been millennia, I swear to Cod. It does.”

Terezi gives her a thin smile. Karkat clears his throat. “You said you had a request,” he prompts. 

His impatience disappoints Feferi. Her mouth twists with displeasure. “I do,” she says. “But it’s awfully bad news. I didn’t want to come out swinging with it.” 

“We can handle bad news.”

“I’m sure you can! But I don’t want to be the bearer.” She shrugs. “Oh, well. Someone has to say.” She refers to something offscreen, and then turns back to the camera. “Do you remember the mission to the Andalusian System?”

“I remember Sollux mentioned it,” says Karkat, guarded. He’s antsy. She can smell anxiety all over him. 

“Well,” she says, “that didn’t go so well.”

“What happened?”

“What didn’t happen,” she counters, uncharacteristically philosophical. “A lot of fins! There was a rat, first of all. So that didn’t help. We lost a couple of ships, good ships. And we were counting on a lot more locals to be sympathetic to our cause.”

Terezi notes the use of _we_ instead of _my_ , which she finds rather generous. To suggest that their causes are one and the same would not be a wholly honest representation of the truth.

“Shit,” Karkat says. Feferi agrees.

“It wasn’t good,” she says. “And the thing was, there was a lot of stuff riding on that mission! For example. The Andalusian banking clams.”

Karkat blinks, uncomprehending. She rolls her eyes. 

“Banking clans,” she elaborates. “Andalusian banking _clans._ Rich trolls with lots and lots of money! All of whom are rich enough to fund ten rebellions each, if they wanted. Trolls it would be absolutely fintastic to have on our side. But trolls that don’t make investments unless they know there’s a chance it’ll pay off, a guarantee that we haven’t been able to give them. I had _hoped_ that winning the battle in the Andalusian system would have worked. But unfor-tuna-tely,” she says, “that didn’t clam out.” 

“So?” 

“So,” she drawls, “I need another victory! Luckily, you don’t need to worry about it. I already came up with the idea.” If possible, she grins even wider. “All you need to do is kelp me out.” 

She taps something on her databook, and a picture appears onscreen. It’s a young violetblood troll with horns peeling back from his head, short-cropped hair, and a stiff sneer. 

“This is Junior Senaterror Zinnet,” she says. “He’s a member of the Alternian Senate. He’s still eight sweeps, so he hasn’t gone through Conscription yet, but he’s on the fast track to promotion. He’s one of the Admiral’s personal apprentices.” At the mention of Ampora, her grin fades. “He — he does that, you sea. He picks kids from the nobility to make his aides. Gives them special honors and titles and then brings them into the fold when they’re nine sweeps. Zinnet’s pretty notable.”

“What do you want us to do, then?” Karkat folds his arms.

“Oh,” she says, as if she hadn’t realized she had failed to actually describe the mission. “Kidnap him.”

Karkat snorts before he can stop himself. “Kidnap a Junior Senaterror,” he says. “One of Ampora’s pets. Just nab him up, simple as that.”

“Yes,” she says, unblinking. “He will not go unnoticed. We can ransom him, too, for even more publicity. It’s exactly the kind of thing that would get the banking clams to pay attention. It shows we’re thinking big! Going for members of the government!” She pumps her fist, as if she’s been carried away by her own verve. “It’s inspiring!”

“It’s suicide,” Karkat says flatly. “Planning that kind of thing would take time. Executing it — given that it’s possible in the first place, which we don’t know it is — would take tons of resources. We can’t spend that kind of capital on a show mission, and especially one for the purpose of pleasing a bunch of highblood bankers.” 

“Well, how much time would you need?”

He groans. “Weeks,” he says. “Hypothetically. Maybe a perigee. To get people together, to plan for that kind of thing. Granted that we agree to do it, which, again, we haven’t —”

“About that,” she says. “The Alternian Senate has a session once in a half-sweep. That meeting happens tonight.”

Stunned quiet swallows the briefing room. If Feferi notices, it doesn’t give her pause. 

“So,” she says. “Will you do it?”

Karkat looks to Kanaya, eyes wide, seeking an answer, and she lifts her hands helplessly. 

“Give us a minute to talk about it,” he tells the Heiress. “We’ll give you an answer once we’ve discussed —”

“The banking clans are waiting for my call,” Feferi says. “And the session is happening later tonight. There is a limited period for deliberation. It’s a pretty simple one, actually!”

“Well, it’s a little different on this end,” he says, strained, “so if you’ll let us take five, call our moirails, ask for volunteers —”

“Will you or won’t you?” 

Her tone flattens, insistent. Karkat doesn’t answer immediately. 

“No,” he says, finally. “No, that’s — it’s insane. It’s not workable. I can’t risk anyone over something like that.”

Kanaya relaxes.

Feferi’s lips thin, and she pouts. “That’s a shame,” she says. “Because funding would be a great kelp. It’s kind of hard to do the shoal thing out-of-pocket, Karcrab. I don’t know how long I can keep that up.”

If she doesn’t realize it’s a threat, then she’d have to be stupid. All the same, Terezi can’t imagine that she’s that bold — threatening her main general in front of his entire cabinet would be a horrific diplomatic decision. She has to know that. Feferi needs every scrap of popularity she can manage, and she’s bleeding goodwill.

Karkat’s shoulders are rigid with tension as he says, “Sure,” and then, “Fine, great, awesome.” Each syllable seems to hurt him. “We’ll do it. You got it. One Senaterror. You bet. No problem.” 

“Great,” she chirps, immediately bright again. “Can I expect a debrief by tomorrow night?”

“Uh,” he chokes. “That’s a pretty tall fucking order —”

“Can I or can’t I?”

He exhales heavily through his nose, pinching its bridge. Then he says, “Sure. Yeah. Tomorrow night.”

“Fintastic.” She beams, and her canines loom near to the camera, very close and very sharp. “Message me when it’s fin-ished. Good luck! Thanks.”

She cuts off the transmission without a goodbye. 

Silence.

Vriska blows a long sigh through her teeth and leans back in her chair, arching her eyebrows. Karkat massages his temple, eyes screwed closed in what appears to be the headache of the century. Aradia steeples her fingers, brow furrowed. 

Kanaya is the first to speak.

“I’ll do it,” she offers. “I’ve been to the Capitol before. I know it.” She laces her fingers on the table and looks around calmly. “We can create a diversion in another part of the city, to draw the city guard away. That will leave just the Senate guards, and those can be dealt with when the time comes, if it comes. You can tell the trolls on the diversionary mission whatever you like to avoid recalcitrance; if they believe they’re protecting a resource mission, they will be more likely to volunteer.” 

“No.” Karkat shakes his head. “Non-starter. You’re Lieutenant. You’re needed here.” 

“If this is going to be on a volunteer basis,” Kanaya says, not unkindly, “I don’t believe you can afford veto power.” 

His jawline grows visibly rigid, and he lowers his shoulders. But he acknowledges the point, and he nods shortly. 

“Fine,” he says. “You’re on point. ”

“I’ll need a few others to help,” Kanaya says. “Ideally, special operatives, with practice in espionage. Or other qualities that would put them at place in the Capitol. But I can’t imagine that soliciting volunteers from the general assembly would go over well.”

“No. They’d think — fuck. This is why I didn’t want her calling the fucking shots. There’s no way to _sell_ something like this without seeming like a coward or an idiot.” He presses his knuckles into the table. The skin pales from pressure. 

Terezi scents subtly. Vriska smells bored, her chin rested in her palm, eyes fixed on something out the window. She isn’t paying attention.

“I’ll go,” says Terezi.

Vriska bolts upright and stares.

Kanaya glances between them, hesitating. “You are,” she says, “a somewhat notable presence —”

“You need to get into the Senate building,” Terezi points out. “For that, you need a guise. The only way to get onto the Senate floor is if you’re a member of the peerage or someone in government. Those qualifications have only ever applied to one person in the block.” She gestures to herself.

“What are you proposing?”

She shrugs. “I’ll play legislacerator,” she says. “You can play my guard. None of us are young enough to pose as children, but senior legislacerators hang out at these kinds of events all the time. You’re not cold enough to play nobility, but nobody will look twice at you as part of someone else’s entourage.” 

Vriska tries to interrupt, and Terezi speaks over her. “And besides,” she says. “I’m not bad with a sword. I could be a decent help.”

“You’re not exactly anonymous,” Karkat says.

“Give me contacts. Or horncaps, if you’re really that concerned.”

Kanaya examines her. Then she nods. “All right,” she says. “It’s a decent plan. And we’re short of volunteers.” 

“I’ll come,” Aradia chimes in. “You’ll need a pilot, and I’ve worked with the Counselor before.”

Karkat glances at Kanaya. “Your mission,” he says. “You’re running point.”

Kanaya nods. “That would be acceptable,” she agrees. “You’re welcome to join us.”

“Us and a copilot for the speedlift will make four,” Aradia says. “The extraction unit should be small enough to look like a guard for the legislacerator; I’ll want the copilot to man the lift, which brings us down to three. A senior legislacerator should typically have a guard of at least three.”

Kanaya glances at Terezi to confirm this. She does with a nod.

“You do have three,” Vriska says. 

“The Lieutenant and Aradia are two people,” Terezi says, acerbically, “and the copilot makes three. I’m the fourth member, but I can’t very well pose as a member of my own guard.” 

“Yeah, but I’m going,” Vriska says offhandedly.

Karkat sighs, bracing his head in his hands. Terezi narrows her eyes.

“No, you’re not.” 

“Of course I am.”

“What has anyone said this evening that makes you think that you were invited?”

She arches an eyebrow. “I don’t think you can stop me.” 

“You don’t get to pick and choose what missions you go on. If you haven’t noticed, that’s not how being part of a standing army really works.”

“I’m not part of a standing army. I’m Archagent of the Second Alternian Empire, and last I checked, legal consultants don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“Generals do,” Karkat pipes up. Terezi has never liked him so much. “This one says no.”

“What? _Why?”_

Vriska’s mouth drops open in outrage. Terezi doesn’t smirk, because that would be undignified. She does, however, lift her eyebrows infinitesimally. She has never claimed to be a good sport.

“Because it’s a mission calling for subtlety and good judgment. Neither of which are in your arsenal.” 

“I have good judgment!” To her credit, she makes no claims defending her subtlety. Perhaps she has some sense of credibility.

“Serket, I’m not disputing the fact that you have some — few — but some redeeming qualities. That does not mean that common sense is one of them.”

“I’m one of your best officers!”

“You’re the best at what you do, sure. But we don’t need that kind of thing anywhere near this mission.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means _no,”_ Terezi informs her. “Was he unclear?”

“I’m going.” Vriska folds her arms. “Try and stop me.”

“I can, actually,” Karkat says. 

“Not without wasting good time and resources. Of which you have a piss-poor amount already.” 

Karkat lifts his eyes to the ceiling. “This,” he says. “ _This._ Is this it? This is the hill you’re willing to die on.”

“Yes,” Vriska says, and rests her knuckles on the table. She fixes him with a glower made all the more intimidating by ring-eyed exhaustion. “Are you?”

He engages in her staring content for a moment, and then breaks eye contact, huffing. “No,” he says. “I don’t have the fucking blood pressure to fight you on this, Serket, so what the fuck ever, go leap into a nest of lawbugs, what do I fucking care. Maybe when you get stabbed through the goddamn thorax, you’ll hear me whispering _I told you_ so ever so fucking gently in your ear.”

It’s a testament to how out of sorts Vriska is feeling that she doesn’t retort. One could even mistake it for restraint. 

“General,” Terezi says. “She’s a known entity. She’s not indiscreet.” 

“Neither are you, Pyrope.”

“Give me some contacts and a new haircut, I’m fine,” she snaps. “The metal arm, however, requires a significantly higher degree of cosmetic work —”

“Give her a glove,” he says tiredly. “And a haircut. Maybe some sunglasses, for the bugged-out pupils. Can we be done arguing about this? I’d like to be.” 

“You’re making a mistake.”

“It won’t be my first in an hour,” Karkat says, and he sounds too tired to be angry about it. 

Terezi gets up and strides from the room. Both Karkat and Vriska call her back, and she does not answer them.

  


* * *

  


“Terezi!”  


Vriska finds her waiting for the elevator. Terezi struggles to keep her temper.

“Terezi — hey! Terezi!”

She has longer legs than Terezi does, so she catches up without difficulty, damn her. Dramatic exits would be much easier if Terezi were capable of actually outrunning her.

“Go back to the briefing,” she says.

“Where do you get off telling me to do that?” Vriska gestures behind her. “You planning on going back?”

“No.”

“Well, then.”

“Go back,” Terezi says. The elevator slides open, and Vriska wedges her way onboard before Terezi can close the doors. Terezi presses the button for the ground floor, keeping her tone steady. 

“No.”

“Should I bother asking why?”

“Why didn’t you want me to come?” 

The elevator starts moving. Terezi wraps her fingers into a vise around the neck of her cane and imagines it’s Vriska’s.

“You know.”

“I don’t, actually,” she says, frustrated. After a moment: “Do you think I’ll fuck it up?”

“No.”

“Do you think I’m gonna run away?” Vriska’s voice rises. 

“I don’t know why you think yelling is going to make me more forthcoming,” Terezi says. The deflection does not go unnoticed. 

“So you do.”

“Is that what I said?”

Vriska slams her fist on the STOP button, and the elevator staggers to a halt. Terezi catches her balance on the wall. 

“Tell me that you didn’t just trap us in an elevator because you’re sore that I argued with you.”

Terezi moves to press a button and start the elevator again. Vriska blocks her path.

“You’re not talking to me.” 

“I am, actually. It’s a very distinct, unpleasant sensation.”

“No, you’re not. You’re — I don’t know what you’re doing. But you’re going to stop it, and we’re gonna sit here until you do.”

Terezi squints at her.

“Do you have _any_ way of solving your problems that doesn’t involve threats?”

“Shooting at them,” Vriska says, and it’s hard to tell if she’s joking. Terezi doesn’t laugh.

“You seem to be under the impression that the problems I have with you can be solved by one conversation in an elevator,” she says. “As long as that persists, I don’t think there’s much point in trying.” 

“I don’t want to have a fucking feelings jam,” Vriska sneers. “I just want to know what the fuck is going on. You know, since I’m going to be trusting you with my back in a few hours?”

“If you don’t trust me,” Terezi begins icily, and Vriska rolls her eyes, slams her head back against the wall with a _thunk._

“Jesus Christ. Of course I do. Way to miss the point.” 

“Well, I don’t see what else the point could be, if your problem is trust —”

“The problem’s not _my_ trust!”

“Why did you want to go at all?” Terezi snaps. “What’s your hurry to get out of here, all of a sudden?”

Vriska blinks. “That’s obvious,” she says. “Do you not — is that not obvious to you?”

“Apparently not!”

“It’s dangerous! The Capitol is crawling with guards, soldiers, jumped-up wrigglers just chomping at the bait to cull somebody — there isn’t a damn troll in that city that wouldn’t kill you.”

“And you don’t trust the Lieutenant? You don’t trust Aradia?”

“I trust them to do exactly their job,” Vriska insists, pushing herself off the wall with an unexpected burst of vigor. “I trust them to fight their hardest and do their damnedest to get the mission done. I trust them to watch your back, yeah, but I don’t trust them to keep that watch if something comes up, or the mission is compromised. It’s not their job to keep you safe.”

“And it is yours,” Terezi says flatly.

“No,” Vriska says, but it’s cautious. She’s guessing what Terezi wants to hear.

“You think it is.”

“You can take care of your damn self,” Vriska snaps. “But it never hurt anybody to have someone at their back. Why _don’t_ you want me to go, anyway, huh?”

The abrupt heel-turn into interrogation answers Terezi’s question as succinctly as a confession. She runs her fingers through her hair.

“You’re a liability,” she says.

“No, I’m not. I’ve kidnapped people before. I know how to do it.”

“To me.”

“We’ve worked together more times than you and I both could count on our digits —”

“It’s not your work ethic I object to.” 

“Just fucking _tell_ me, then!”

Guilt prods at her. Terezi is not being a good moirail. Vriska is; Vriska is doing what good moirails ought to do, and attempting to set things straight between them, wipe the record clean. That she attempted this by locking them both in an elevator does not necessarily detract from the fact that she is trying, and doing her best to accomplish, a very reasonable objective for a moirail to have: resolving the conflict.

But Terezi doesn’t want to resolve the conflict. Not really. She doesn’t and it scares some small part of her, because good moirails don’t _like_ fighting with their moirails, they don’t enjoy sparring through every conversation or the thrill of getting a rise out of their partner. It isn’t pale to fight, to argue, or even to bicker, picking at the minutia of the other’s sentiments and magnifying their flaws, like some kind of sick game. There shouldn’t be anything _exciting_ about being yelled at by one’s palemate. But even so, there _is_. 

The realization makes Terezi’s bloodpusher trip over itself and she feels a renewed urge to end the conversation quickly. “Perhaps,” she says curtly, “I am opposed to you going for the same reason that you would like to. Have you considered that?”

Vriska pauses.

“Well. Perhaps you should.” 

“Ter—”

“Start the goddamn elevator,” she says. Vriska does.

  


* * *

  


They give her a legislacerator’s uniform for the mission. She doesn’t have a clue where they would have gotten one, but doesn’t bother asking. Freshly washed and creased, stiff enough to have come straight from the manufacturing plant, the red vest fits a pinch tight around her ribs, but otherwise everything fits well enough. She hasn’t worn a uniform — a proper uniform — since the trial. She’s careful not to sniff the mirror while she dresses.  


Kanaya wants her to leave the swordstick behind, but she refuses.

“It’s identifiable,” the Lieutenant points out. “The cane is not a subtle accessory.”

“Then I won’t take the cane part.” 

“The hilt of your sword is a dragon, Counselor.” 

“Then I’ll wear it under my jacket,” she says, and adds, “I’m not leaving it behind.” 

“We can arm you with another blade.”

“I won’t be as good with another blade.” 

Aradia interjects, then, with an unanticipated display of solidarity. “Let her keep it,” she says. “Terezi’s known for being blind. If she’s wearing contacts, no one will give a second look to her sword.”

“Fine,” Kanaya says, and leaves it be.  


  


* * *

  


They meet in the hangar at midnight. Kanaya, Aradia, and Vriska are dressed as soldiers, a legislacerator’s guard, and wear rifles strapped to their hips; Terezi is the only one wearing a splash of color.  


They all wear Terezi’s symbol in teal over their breast pockets, the mark of her personal guard. Vriska has also come by an eyepatch to hide her vision eightfold. Her hair is pinned back, not a hair drifting from its seal, and it occurs to Terezi that she’s never seen Vriska with her hair up before. It changes her silhouette dramatically. It emphasizes the shape of her horns and the arch of her neck, and it’s probably not meant to be distracting.

Aradia climbs into the cockpit of their speeder. It’s a personal shuttle, not technically the likes of which a senior legislacerator would own, but Terezi doubts they could have procured a Bar speeder on short notice. 

She climbs into the cabin and finds a seat near the rear. Kanaya stands near the door. As the lift ascends, Vriska takes a tentative seat near Terezi, which Terezi ignores. 

The engine hum is the only sound in the cabin for long enough that their silence takes a headfirst plunge into awkwardness. They’re sitting too close together to justify ignoring each other, and Terezi resents Vriska for that, a bit.

Lifting her voice, she addresses Kanaya. “Do you know why we have an Alternian Senate?”

Kanaya turns at the sound. “No,” she says, mildly intrigued. “I had presumed it was for grooming young nobility for the job of rulership.”

“Not originally.” She drums her fingers on the windowsill. “Before the Great Withdrawal, when adults lived on Alternia. Do you know what it was for then?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Not many do. It’s not schoolfed, and even the Academy is reluctant with the information.” Vriska is listening to her, although her face is turned to the window. Terezi can tell; she stops fidgeting when Terezi starts to speak. 

“Control,” she says. “It was originally established to serve the same function as the governors do, now. Rule. A tad too democratic for the Empress’ tastes, but the art of experimentation is decorated by failure.” 

“A mistake on her part,” Kanaya says.

“I suppose.” Terezi contemplates this. “I doubt the Empress would characterize it that way.” She stretches. “And after that, the Bar used it for a while. As a court.” 

“Did they hear trials?”

“A few. _Ampora vs. Peixes_ was argued there. They say the Admiral was so sore about losing that he convinced the Empress to abandon it and leave it for child Senaterrors instead.” 

“I don’t think the Empress could be convinced to do anything,” Kanaya says.

“I’m inclined to agree.”

Vriska says, “It burned down, didn’t it?”

Terezi startles. “Yes,” she says. “Did you —”

“Wrigglers get standardized history modules, Counselor,” Vriska says flatly.

“I didn’t get the module on Alternia. My history credit was in government. I was unaware that they covered landmarks. It was not a remark on your personal competence.” 

“Right. Well. It did, anyway.”

Terezi works her jaw and lets the argument lie. Kanaya regards them with trepidation, and when Vriska catches her looking, averts her eyes.

  


* * *

  


They touch down a few blocks from the Senate building and walk the rest of the way, to avoid bringing attention to their vehicle. Around here, the dispersion of scents is far more varied than in the compound. In the business quarter, blood trends cold, mostly dark blues, a few purples. The closer they get to the Senate, the more highbloods appear. Terezi is mildly surprised by the way that fashion’s changed since she was planetside. Gill piercings decorate most seadwellers, and symbol tattoos curl over bared arms and bangled wrists. Jewelry rests in layers over pencil-grey flesh. Accustomed as she is to working with younger trolls from the Movement, these are all children. Their youngness unnerves her. The idea of fighting them unnerves her, too.  


She pauses in ascending the stairs to the Senate and scans the crowd. The entire place reeks of violets and foxglove, purples so pale they border on Imperial, and instinctive unease settles in her gut. 

Vriska brushes her side, a hand on her rifle. “Problem?”

“Not yet. Take your prong off your gun.”

“Why?”

“Take your prong off your goddamn gun.” One of the Senate guards is looking at them. Terezi nods at him, and prays desperately that Vriska doesn’t choose now to make a scene.

Vriska removes her hand, slowly, and clasps it in her other behind her back. “Yes, milady,” she announces, louder than necessary, and falls a step behind.

“Thank you,” Terezi murmurs. It’s quiet enough that Vriska may not even have heard it. She keeps climbing the stairs.

Kanaya and Aradia are waiting at the top of the steps. When she gets close enough to speak without being overheard, Kanaya glances out over the crowd, and then back to Terezi, implication clear.

“No,” Terezi says. “He’s inside, in all likelihood.”

She sighs. “Do you think we could wait for him to come out?”

“Unlikely. We’d be suspicious, if not guilty of loitering.” 

“It’s crawling with hostiles, inside,” Vriska points out. Her vision eightfold swivels around beyond the building’s marble exterior. 

“It’s crawling with hostiles, outside,” Terezi points out, which no one seems to have an answer to, and so they head inside. Terezi hates being right, sometimes.

The Senate building is an enormous amphitheater, with hundreds of seats arranged in a complete circle around a speaker’s podium in the center. That podium rises from the base like a pulpit of oak wood, and stands directly under a glass skylight, flooding the room with pale green moonlight. The ceiling arches up in rows upon rows of engraved marble, decorated with murals of the Age of Conquest, and balconies sprout from the sides of the room, held up by broad ridged columns. Throngs of trolls congregate in the balconies and underneath them, swirling together in tight knots, cliques, orders. They smell overwhelmingly of lilacs and deep blues, with the occasional dot of marigold, russet, in the servants who bob in and out with trays of hors d’oeuvres. Aradia is the lowest rung of the hemospectrum present. Terezi’s not the only legislacerator there, but she’s by far the youngest; the other two she spots on the other side of the amphitheater, wearing the broad-shouldered tailcoat of a Barristerror, and accompanied by a pair of yellow-eyed Clerkillers. Neither of them can be more than a sweep out from the Academy. 

Vriska presses closer to Terezi and her hand returns to the holster of her gun. “One of the nobles is looking at you,” she murmurs, her mouth close enough to Terezi’s ear that it stirs her hair. 

“Good. Let them.”

“He might suspect something.”

“Then stop looking like you’re one snide remark away from shooting someone.”

“They can tell I’m blue. They’re probably wondering what I’m doing guarding a tealblood.”

“No, they’re not. Senior legislacerators select their guard personally. I could have pulled you from the ranks of the cavalreapers. Not that it matters, as you looking anxious is far more telling than your blood color.”

Vriska pauses and looks at her sidelong. “Why didn’t you have a guard, then?”

“What do you mean?”

“Weren’t you one of the top lawbugs?”

“I wasn’t a senior legislacerator, no. I was a legislacerator, First Class, but that’s a distinct honor.”

“What’s the fucking difference?”

“Senior remarks upon seniority,” Terezi says, under her breath. “Class, upon rank. I would have been offered a guard after ten sweeps of legislacerative work.”

“Why is your order so goddamn complicated?”

“There are thousands of legislacerators in the galaxy. If you can come up with a simple way of organizing thousands of trolls, I’m sure the Magistragedy would welcome your proposal.” 

She halts at the corner of the room and takes a deep breath. She can’t afford to go sniffing around the way she wants to — it would raise questions — so she relies on the others to seek out Zinnet by sight instead of putting effort into finding him. Instead, she scouts the area in its entirety, making note of the guards and the exits, the stairwell that curls up from the corner, the back exit. Virtually everyone in the room is armed, or protected by people who are. It is in their best interest not to get in a fight.

“There,” Aradia says, pointing. Terezi follows it.

On the other side of the room, a Junior Senaterror chats with several of his superiors clad in dark violet robes. His horns droop down from the back of his head and coil up at the nape of his neck, and his symbol, printed in gold on the back of his his purple suit, mimics their arc. It’s their mark. 

“Well spotted,” Kanaya says. “How do you suppose we extricate him?”

Aradia nudges Vriska. “You could try mind control,” she suggests. 

Vriska shakes her head. “Highblood,” she says. “Can’t touch him.”

“We could just run over and grab him.”

“We’d never make it out.” 

“Well, those are our options. We need him out of the building, and he’s not going of his own accord.” 

Terezi begins winding her way over through the crowd.

“Terezi? What are you — Terezi!”

It’s whispered, and Terezi can pretend not to hear it. Her guards follow her, shouldering their way between cliques of highbloods, albeit with muttered displeasure. Terezi plasters a bright grin over her face as she grows close to the mark, waving to an imaginary acquaintance, tossing out greetings to strangers. She assumes the picture of a dignified senior legislacerator, and none pay enough attention to her to call her on chinks in the facade.

She slings an arm around their mark’s shoulders and cries, “Avokat!”

Zinnet turns with an expression of disgruntled disgust. “Pardon?”

He leans heavy on his vowels with an unmistakeable seadweller accent. It makes sense. Ampora wouldn’t make an apprentice of anyone without gills. 

She blinks, and then leaps backward, hands flying up. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she gasps. “I mistook you for someone else — oh, that’s _awwfully_ embarrassing.” 

She affects a highblood accent, drawling her ‘w.’ She’s known midbloods who frequent these kinds of events to adopt the speech patterns of those higher up on the hemospectrum; it seems to assure him of her innocence. 

“Well. Don’t let it happen again.”

“Of course not. I’d never dream of it. I’ll just be — oh. Are you — are you Senaterror Zinnet?” 

His brow furrows with unease, but he nods. 

“Oh, that’s excellent! I was speaking to the Admiral the other day — are you sure? _The_ Senaterror Zinnet?”

He brightens at the mention of the Admiral. “You know Ampora?”

“ _Knoww_ him. That’s a good one. I wwork for him, dear.” 

“I didn’t know he had legislacerators in his staff.” 

“Everyone in the Empire has a legislacerator somewhere on their staff,” Terezi assures him. “He had a _lot_ to say about you, actually. Wwent on for _hours._ ”

“Really?”

It’s too easy. It can’t be this easy. “Assuredly,” she says, and smiles even more broadly. “I had hoped to run into you here, to — although I don’t suppose these fine gentletrolls are interested,” she says, nodding to Zinnet’s companions. Neither of them seem to put much stock in her story, which means that it’d likely be good policy to extricate the Senaterror from their company. 

“What do you mean?”

“If wwe could have a wword in private,” Terezi suggests, stressing her doubled consonants. 

“That won’t be necessary,” one of the highbloods interjects.

“Oh, I wwouldn’t feel comfortable talking about the Admiral in the presence of any but his prodigy,” Terezi frets. “It wwouldn’t take a moment.”

“All the same.” 

She turns to Zinnet, expression entreating. “It wwould feel like gossip,” she presses, trying to keep the urgency out of her voice. “It wwould feel dreadfully rude.” 

It’s too far. He’s suspicious, now, his scent dipping into pungent sourness. “I don’t think so.”

She hesitates, and Vriska touches her elbow. “Madame Counselor,” she says. “A word.” 

Terezi hesitates, and then tells Zinnet, “I’ll be back in a moment.” 

She dips off to the side and crosses her arms. “You’d better have a goddamn fantastic reason,” she says, “for interrupting that.”

“Other than the fact that you were flailing like a grounded fish?”

“I was _working the target.”_

“Is that what you were doing? Because it sounded an awful lot like getting shut down.”

“Persuasion takes time.”

“Which we don’t have. The longer we’re here, the higher the risk.”

“I’m aware. Which makes this intermission increasingly inane the longer you waste time criticizing my strategy. Do you have a helpful contribution or not?”

Vriska sucks in her breath and represses her retort. “I was going to say,” she grits out, “that we should stage a diversion. Grab him in the panic.” 

“What kind of diversion?” 

Vriska lays a hand on her gun.

“You’re not shooting someone for the sake of a distraction.”

“I meant the fucking ceiling, thanks.” Vriska narrows her eyes. “That skylight is glass. If it breaks, everyone will hear it.”

Terezi spares a sniff in its direction. “That’s true,” she says, neutrally. Vriska is glaring at her and she knows why, but she doesn’t have time to examine it, and they don’t have time to hash out the implications of her suggestion. 

Aradia grabs Terezi’s elbow, forcing her way through a knot of bureaucretins to reach them. “The Senaterror is finishing up his conversation,” she hisses. “They’re going to call the session to order soon. If you want to get him with minimal people noticing —”

“Fuck. Fine.” Vriska pulls out her gun and takes aim at the skylight. “Tell Kanaya to grab him as soon as the yelling starts.”

“Are you going to fire that in here?”

“I don’t have time to explain,” Vriska snaps. “Are you going to do it or not?”

Aradia exhales sharply and disappears into the crowd to find Kanaya. Terezi braces herself for the bullet and impact as Vriska’s finger tightens over the trigger, and —

“What are you doing?”

The guard appears in front of Vriska, eyes wide with alarm, and Vriska fires just as he opens his mouth to call for help. 

The skylight shatters. Glass falls from the ceiling, glittering like jagged-edged snowflakes, and tinkles as it lands. The sound reverberates around the echoing the chamber, and silence falls. 

Trolls surge towards the exits. Terezi is battered by the stampede, and she struggles to stay in formation with Aradia and Kanaya as Vriska clamps her hand over the kid’s mouth, a precaution taken too late. Guards converge on them in throngs. 

Terezi dives forward and grabs the guard’s specibus — whipkind, not pistolkind, and she thanks the Handmaid for small miracles — tugging it away from him before he has the chance to use it. Leaping up to reach his head, she slips the ends around each other while in midair and slips a loop around his neck, tightening the noose around his chin in her descent. Her boots make contact with the floor and the height difference forces him to bend backward to avoid being strangled by his own altitude, setting him off balance and bringing him to the ground. 

His partner notices and starts forward. She brings the whip taut and sweeps it towards his legs, catching him at the ankle and sending him sprawling. When he falls, she snags up his specibus — bladekind, a short, stumpy dagger — and tosses it into her better hand. 

Another guard springs at Vriska from behind, a knife clutched in his right hand, but Vriska is occupied already, under siege by a gang of highblood Senaterrors, and even as she plucks them off with a spray of bullets, she won’t notice him before he reaches her.

Terezi flings her dagger and it buries itself in the guard’s wrist, forcing him to drop the knife. He swears and spasms, but by now Vriska notices him, and as she whirls around, he reorients himself and lashes out with his left fist.

He punches Vriska in the side of her face bearing the eyepatch, and her whole body twists with the momentum, stumbling a few steps back. The patch string tangles over her free eye and she tears it off with a frustrated snarl, tossing it away, and then surges back, her left hand curling into a fist.

Her metal limb catches the guard under his jaw and the force snaps his head back at a ninety degree angle to his spine. He soars into the wall. His skull makes a resounding _crack_ as it collides with the marble. Terezi winces despite herself. 

Then a group of Senaterrors barrels between them, and Terezi is separated from Vriska. She tries to claw her way back, but the vast majority are bigger than her, and their inertia carries her toward the exit against her will. 

Kanaya grabs Terezi by the wrist and hauls her into an alcove. She’s holding Zinnet in a grip that appears to be cutting off circulation to his arm. He’s attempting to wriggle out of it, which she doesn’t seem to notice at all. “Done,” she says. “We need to leave.” 

“What’s going on,” Zinnet demands. “Are you taking me to safety?”

“Let’s go with that,” Aradia says, bobbing up at his other side. “Where’s Vriska?”

“I don’t know,” Terezi says. Her bloodpusher is rocketing. “We were separated — she was fighting off a squadron of guards —”

“We’ve got to leave. If she doesn’t show up soon —”

“We’re not leaving without her,” Terezi informs her.

Kanaya says, tightly, “This isn’t a question. If she —”

“ _I’m_ not leaving without her,” Terezi insists. “Good luck getting him out of here with half your squad.”

“Now is not the ideal time to have —”

“This isn’t an argument,” she says. “This is a recitation of the facts.” 

Kanaya is about to say something when the aforementioned gamblignant makes her entrance, elbowing a fleeing bureaucretin in the face, knocking them to the ground, and stepping on his face to reach them. 

Her hair tumbles out of its pin in tangled snarls, one sleeve of her uniform is torn, and a rivulet of blood drips from her split lip where the guard punched her, and she’s gleaming all over with sweat. Something hot twists in Terezi’s gut. Warmth suffuses her, a happy, soft feeling, and it’s wildly inappropriate to be feeling this affectionate in the throes of battle. It’s also a wildly inappropriate feeling to be directed at one’s moirail. 

The Senaterror freezes, and lets out a minute whimper.

Vriska glares at him, and Terezi comes to the abrupt realization that both her eyes are bare. Eight pupils swivel around and settle on Zinnet’s ashen face.

His mouth falls open. 

Then he screams, _“Help,”_ and the guards who had congregated at the entrance notice his captivity. 

“Shit,” Aradia yells, and then, pushing at Kanaya’s shoulder, herds them toward the stairwell. “Come on!”

Vriska slings Zinnet over her shoulder like a sack of tubers and pounds up the stairs after Aradia, with Kanaya and Terezi hot on her heels. Near the main entrance, trolls surge together in an attempt to escape — Terezi would laugh if her breath weren’t coming in pants — what they imagine Vriska’s going to do to them is questionable, but reputation is a powerful deterrent. 

Not for the guards, apparently; another squadron joins their followers, and gunfire splits the bannister at Terezi’s side. She curses and whips her hand away from it, shoving Kanaya forward. Zinnet is still screaming. She wishes he would stop. It’s distracting.

The stairwell leads up into a hallway flanked with offices. Aradia kicks open the door to one, mercifully unoccupied, and leads them inside. Terezi is the last one through the doorway, and she slams it behind her, snapping off the lock. Guards thud against it, and fists pound against the wall, accompanied by shouts. The voices only grow as more soldiers climb the stairs, in hot pursuit. 

“Okay,” Kanaya says, breathing ragged. “We have a matter of moments before they get through that door —”

“And a fat handful of _nothing_ to get us out of here,” Vriska snaps. “Why in the Handmaid’s name did you go _up,_ Megido?”

“The exit was flooded,” Aradia says, not bothering to rise to the implicit insult. “We wouldn’t have made it. We can climb up through the fire escape outside the window and catch a speedlift from the top of the building.” 

“They’re going to be through in a matter of seconds, we don’t have time to climb to the roof!”

“A better idea would be welcome,” Kanaya snaps.

Terezi plucks out her contacts. The ruse is up, and they were irritating. “The door is unideal,” she says. “Given that we’d have to fight through dozens of them before coming within spitting distance of the exit. And they’ve doubtlessly called for backup.” She nods to the window. “That seems the best option. Regardless, if something is not done about the guards, they’ll be through before we can be out the window.” 

Aradia makes a noise of mixed agreement and frustration. 

“Hey, Megido,” Vriska says suddenly. “You remember that trick with the ghosts you pulled on the Church ship?”

Aradia pales. 

“I — yes,” she says. “I remember it, but I’m almost certain I can’t —”

Vriska hisses a sigh through her teeth. “It would be mighty convenient if you could,” she wheedles.

“I’m not a trick hoofbeast,” she hisses. “I can’t just _do_ it anywhere, there need to be spirits nearby, and they need to be amenable to suggestion, which is easy to do on a Church ship, with a lot of cull victims, but in the middle of the Senate —”

“It’s a government office! You’re telling me there aren’t any ghosts?”

“There _are,_ but I need _time_. I can’t just tell them to swarm, there needs to be a conversation, a dialogue, I can’t force them to —”

“Are you sure? Have you ever tried?”

“No! I’ve never tried forcing ghosts to do anything, because I don’t want to deal with pissed-off ghosts!”

“ _I’m_ going to be a pissed-off ghost if you don’t get us the fuck out of here,” Vriska roars. 

Aradia releases a screech of frustration, braces herself against the wall, and her eyes roll back into her head. 

The door splinters from the force of someone on the other side. Zinnet tries to shout through his gag, eyes wide, protests muffled.

“Someone shut him up,” Kanaya snaps, and Terezi, ever obliging, puts her sword to his throat and looks him square in the eye. 

Only after his eyes bulge wide enough that they seem to be plotting an escape from his skull does she remember that she’s not wearing her glasses, and that the effect of her glare is probably more intimidating than she’s used to. But he shuts up, so she considers it a tactical advantage.

“Get ready,” warns Aradia, and already her voice is warped, distorted, like a dozen chanting in chorus. Kanaya backs away.

“What, exactly, am I preparing myself for?”

Vriska shoves Zinnet towards the window. “Put it this way,” she says. “You ever seen _Carrie?”_

“What are you talking —”

Aradia opens her eyes, and the wall explodes. 

Thousands of wraiths twist into being from thin air, writhing with a fervent, aggressive energy, knitting themselves in the air like a solid wave of bleached white. They tear apart the wall as if their forms are acidic to touch and wreath around the subjugglators beyond it, howling, stripping skin from flesh from bone. It isn’t the pure blast of incinerating power that Aradia loosed on the ship; this is slower, more unstable, more impure, and the ghosts trembles against Aradia’s hold, fighting against her control. Aradia’s arms shake, sweat beading on her skull. She lifts slightly from the floor, and ice spreads beneath her feet, creeping across the room in asymmetrical patterns.

“That’s enough,” Vriska warns. The guards are long dead. The architecture of the building itself rots away, now, under the corrosive touch of the wraiths, and the intensity of their howling increases. It occurs to Terezi that these spirits sound very, very unhappy.

“That’s _enough,”_ Vriska repeats, tightening her grip on Zinnet’s collar, and looks to Terezi in panic. “You have to — she’s going to bring the fucking building down —”

Terezi leaps forward and grabs Aradia’s wrist, narrowly avoiding sliding on the icy floor. “Aradia,” she says. “Aradia, stop!”

Aradia doesn’t hear her. Aradia is shaking like a kite in a storm, and her skin is cold enough to burn Terezi’s fingers upon impact. Terezi’s breath turns to fog and the ice reaches further. The floor rots away beneath it, revealing the rafters of the room below them.

“Come back,” she insists. “Come back, you have to come back —”

The ghosts seem to double in size. Aradia’s eyes, now sheer yellow, not an inch of iris visible, twitch back and forth. Her mouth is moving in nonsensical syllables, her skin paling to an unnatural pallor, and Terezi considers the very real possibility that her friend is possessed.

“Come back,” she calls, “because you’re going to bring the building down, Aradia, and if you don’t come back, I’ll have to kill you to avoid that, and I’m not going to kill you.”

She’s probably imagining the temperature dropping a few degrees, but she isn’t imagining the way that Aradia’s mouth stops moving.

“I’m not going to kill you,” she repeats. “So you have to bring this one back for us. Can you do that? You did excellently. Well done! I understand what you mean about angry ghosts being undesirable. But I do very much need you to stop, now, or in all likelihood, I am going to die. Which I imagine is unpleasant, given how these guys are reacting to it.” 

Aradia jerks, once, violently.

Then her irises roll back into her sockets, and she sinks to the ground. The ghosts don’t vanish immediately, but they do begin to thin out, twining around each other and winking out of existence like smoke dissolving in whispers of breath, and the temperature rises to something bearable again. Portions of the floor have been torn away, and the wall of the office remains nonexistent, but none of them are dead, which Terezi regards as a fantastic success.

“Sorry,” she says. It sounds like three trolls talking, instead of one. She shakes her head and repeats “I’m sorry,” and it’s just her voice, hoarse, but singular. Terezi lets go of her wrist, and she takes one staggering step before righting herself.

“That’s fine,” Vriska says weakly. “Well done. Orders followed to the letter. Exactly what was instructed.”

Zinnet is screaming. It’s entirely possible that he pissed himself. Vriska cuffs him over the back of the head, and he stops.

“Yes,” Kanaya says, clearly shaken. “Well — well done.” 

Aradia nods and clambers on unsteady feet over to the window, stepping out onto the fire escape. “Here,” she says. “We can climb to the roof, and — and get speedlifted out of there. That will probably — probably have brought the soldiers —”

“Right,” Vriska agrees immediately. “You. Bureaucretin. Move.” She kicks him behind the knees, and he climbs after Aradia. “Lieutenant?”

Kanaya follows him with as much grace as can be expected, given the circumstances, and keeps a hand on his collar. 

When Terezi straddles the windowsill, Vriska stalls her with a touch to the shoulder.

“Did you mean it?” 

Terezi cocks her head and frowns. Vriska glances at the others, who are already climbing the first flight of stairs to the roof, and repeats, under her breath: “Did you mean it, when you said you wouldn’t . . . ?”

“I don’t know,” Terezi admits. Adds, “It’s what she needed to hear.” 

“I know it was what she needed to hear. Problem was, if you meant it, that was a hell of a gamble.” 

Terezi narrows her eyes.

“Not really,” she says. “I knew I could count on you to do the job in my stead, if I failed.” 

She climbs out onto the fire escape and does not spare a sniff for Vriska’s reaction. 

Kanaya has wrestled Zinnet onto the rooftop and is pushing him along, calling for a speedlift with her wristtop. Aradia helps Terezi over the ledge of the fire escape and leans against the rooftop railing, still breathing heavily from the exertion of the summoning. Terezi pats her on the shoulder. It comes out awkward and ill-placed, but Aradia spares her a brief smile anyway.

Vriska leaps the railing with ease. “All right,” she says. “Feferi wanted a Senaterror, she’s got a Senaterror. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“Believe me, Archagent, it is not my reluctance which keeps us here,” says Kanaya. “The diversionary forces require reinforcement. Primary speedlifts are being directed to their aid.” 

“Are you shitting me? They’re not even part of the mission proper!”

“Every part of the mission is part of the mission proper,” Kanaya says, tone steely, and does not welcome argument. 

Vriska lifts her hands. “Fine. Fine! Your priorities are your priorities, far be it for _me_ to question them. I guess I’ll let you tell Vantas, then, that we’re sitting featherbeasts every second that we stay here longer than we need to.” 

“I know that. So does Karkat. The instant it is strategically viable to pick us up, he will. At the moment, we are trying not to lose large numbers of our forces against the city guard.” 

“Hang the city guard,” Vriska insists. “Hang me and Terezi, even, although you shouldn’t, seeing as we’ve got targets on our backs that’ll bring the whole of the Capitol running the instant someone recognizes us. You’re Lieutenant! You’re worth all of them put together! He’s going to leave you high and dry?”

“ _No_ troll is worth more than another.”

“That’s a very nice soundbite, Troll Sophocles, but take it from someone who’s survived a bit more than you have: that’s not the way you win a war!” 

“I _very_ much doubt that you have survived more than me.”

“We’re going to die,” Terezi says matter-of-factly. “We’re going to die, and on our gravestone it will be inscribed: ‘Here lie four trolls who perished because two of them were too busy having a bulge-measuring contest to do anything about the situation.’ This will be our legacy. Aradia, how do you feel about that being your legacy? I’m coming to terms with it, myself.”

Vriska gives her a withering look. “Don’t hear you suggesting anything,” she points out.

“No, because you were too busy talking to _listen_.” Terezi shakes Zinnet by the collar. He winces. “This young specimen of Alternian beauty here is a member of the bureaucracy, yes?” She pats him on the cheek. “Yes?”

He nods. 

“Great! So that means,” she says, sticking her hand into his suit’s breast pocket, “that he should have a radio line with the city guard. For safety purposes. Isn’t that protocol, Senaterror?”

He nods again.

“Yes, it is. Now, here’s the thing,” she adds. She’s aware of Vriska and Kanaya both watching her with interest. “I’m going to take your gag off in just a moment. When that happens, you aren’t going to scream. Do you know why you’re not going to scream?”

He neither nods nor shakes his head. He probably understands that the question was not designed to have an innocuous answer.

“I’ll tell you. You’re not going to scream because if you scream I will stop you. And stopping you, in all likelihood, will involve disconnecting your vocal chords from your lungs. Do you understand how that happens?” She mimes drawing her sword over his throat. “It happens like this. Are we clear, Senaterror?”

A vigorous nod.

“Excellent. Now, not only are you _not_ going to scream, but are also going to do exactly what I tell you to! I hope you understand that the same threat applies in the event of your noncompliance. Is _that_ clear, Senaterror?”

He swallows and nods. 

“That’s very good to know. What you are going to do is use your comm —” She draws his pocket radio from of his suit and presses it into his palm — “and tell the city guard that the rebel forces are pressing in from the western quarter. Be convincing. Can you do that, Senaterror?”

A pause. She lifts her eyebrows.

He inclines his head, reluctant. She pulls down his gag, tightening her grip on her sword reflexively, but he keeps his mouth shut. When she holds his comm up to his mouth, he repeats her instructions into it, almost verbatim.

Kanaya relaxes. “That should do it,” she says. “A good idea.”

“I’m known for those.” The order finished, Terezi tosses the comm off the building. When Zinnet makes a noise of protest, she shoves the gag back into his mouth and strikes him upside the head with the hilt of her sword, knocking him out. He collapses to the roof.

“So,” she says. “When can we expect a speedlift?” 

“That remains to be seen,” says Kanaya. “I’ll let Karkat know of the diversion, but it should still be a few minutes before one can be summoned to our location.”

“That’s fine. We can afford a few minutes.”

She brings her wristtop to her mouth and begins murmuring. Terezi takes a few steps away to give her some privacy.

In the distance, the smoke from the distraction is dissipating. She can smell the fire from across the city, acrid, and it tastes sharp. The air on the rooftop is tainted by the taste of nicotine; the bureaucretins must use it for smoking breaks. 

“So,” Vriska says, sidling up next to her. “Uh.”

“Very few good conversations ever start that way,” she says.

“Okay, well, should I just come out swinging with ‘let’s talk about some deeply uncomfortable subject’?”

“It would at least spare me the indignity of your attempts at tact.” 

“You’re still pissed.”

“Well spotted.” 

“I don’t,” Vriska begins. “I can’t.”

“Full sentences, Serket. The Empire thrives on them.”

“You were happy just a second ago, when you were making that poor shit do what you wanted —”

“That was when I was doing something I enjoyed. Do you have a point?” 

That lands. Vriska turns her face away too quickly for it to be an innocuous movement. Terezi wants very badly to take it back and does not know how.

“I said I wouldn’t talk about it,” she says. “I mean it.” 

“Yeah, well, I don’t _want_ you to not talk about it, if this is you not talking about it!” Vriska presses the back of her hand to her mouth and keeps her face turned away. Terezi does not know what to say and she hates the feeling.

“I didn’t mean —”

She begins quietly, but peters off in the middle of her sentence as a strange scent catches her off-guard. 

A shadow falls over the city.

She looks up and the taste of the air changes, dimming as a fleet of ships blot out the moons. Dozens of them soar over the city from the west, settling down on the east-most edge of the suburbs, ringing around the gate.

They’re enormous, hideous black constructions, layered with jutting fins and bulbous heads, the landing vehicles of a much larger battle cruiser that comes to settle on the horizon. From the gangplanks pour hundreds upon hundreds of trolls, sporting bone vests and white greasepaint, each equipped with a club the length of their arm.

Each is at least Terezi’s height, and what little skin can be seen under the paint is black like the sky. Swarming through the eastern city gates, they meet the rebel forces with a hideous sound, the crunch of bones echoing for miles from the entrance.

They’re _adults._ People like Terezi, not the new initiates assigned with protecting the Church outposts on Alternia, not the drones patrolling the outskirts; actual, real subjugglators, the most deadly military force in the galaxy, and currently pouring into the streets of the Capitol. 

Ice settles in her stomach. 

“Shit,” she says.

Kanaya is speaking into her wristtop, rapid-fire. “Retreat,” she orders. “Karkat? There are subjugglators here. Order a full retreat _now.”_

Terezi doesn’t hear what he says in return, but it makes Kanaya pull a face.

“Main Street, heading down the uptown area. Airlifts recommended, but not possible for some of the troops at street level. Start evacuation on the northern sector.” 

Vriska perches one foot on the edge and peers into the streets. Her expression is grim. “Double-time that,” she says. “They’re moving fast.”

“Double time,” Kanaya repeats. “Tell the speedlifts to redirect efforts to exit strategies.”

Terezi watches a black horde consume the eastern wall of the city and anxiety sears across the surface of her thinkpan. The Church is there. The Church is _there._ How did the Church know _,_ how did they realize —

“Hold on,” says Terezi. “You can’t fly. The speedlifts will get shot down.”

“We don’t have any other way to evacuate people. Some will go down; others will survive.”

“What do you mean, you don’t have any other way to evacuate?” Vriska is incredulous. “Do you not believe in having a Plan B?”

“If the terminology for contingency provisions follows alphabetical order,” Kanaya says, through gritted teeth, “this would be somewhere around Plan Z. We had other methods of evacuation set up, none of which are viable at the moment because of the presence of the _Mirthful Church.”_

Vriska tenses, and Terezi thinks she’s going to argue. 

Then she says, “Route your cargo ships through the eastern edge of the city and direct your speedlifts to the southern gate, make them think you’re trying evacuation through there as a diversion. Dump whatever resources are in the cargo ships and use them to ferry people instead; they’ve got four times the carrying capacity of your standard speedlift and they’re built resistant to laser fire, which is what they’ll be using, at this distance.”

It stuns Kanaya for a moment, and Vriska adds, irritably, “You don’t become captain of a spaceship without —”

“Knowing shit about spaceships,” Terezi says. “You’re right. That’s more effective.” 

Kanaya hides her surprise admirably. She unhooks her wristtop and tosses it to Vriska, who catches it, startled.

“Repeat that,” she says. Vriska hesitates, and then steps off to the side, reiterating her instructions into the wristtop for Karkat. 

Terezi watches the subjugglators swarm up main street and déjà vu strikes her. She remembers Port Imperial crumpling under the concentrated fire of the _Miracle,_ and a shudder wracks her.

“We need to get out,” she says. “Immediately. As soon as they realize you’re here — or Vriska, any of us, we’re all persons of interest — they’ll raze the city without blinking. Those cannons can manage it.” 

“The nearest airlift point will be blocks away,” Aradia warns, scrolling through a datafeed on her wristtop. “We’re too close to the eastern gate.”

“We can’t use the streets,” Vriska adds, tossing back Kanaya’s wristtop, having finished giving the order. “The juggalos are already past the tenement quarter, we’ll never make it before they catch up to us.”

Kanaya says, “How far can you jump?”

Vriska pales. She looks at the gap between this and the next building — a space of maybe five feet — and back to Kanaya.

“No,” she says.

“The nearest speedlifts will touch down blocks away. We will not find rescue here.” 

“This is a terrible idea,” Vriska says, leaning over the building to eye the distance to the ground. “For the record.”

“Then I would imagine it suits you perfectly,” says Kanaya, and leaps.

She lands on the next rooftop lightly, her chainsaw swinging around to balance her weight, and turns around with expectant patience. Vriska slings the unconscious Zinnet over her shoulder and, sucking in a breath, flings herself over the chasm. She overshoots by at least a few feet, landing well over the edge. 

Terezi, having considerably shorter legs than either of them, has to back up and take a running start, and she still almost doesn’t make it. Her left foot lands on the edge of the building and her right dangles in midair, precariously off-balance, until Kanaya seizes her forearm and hauls her onto the gravel roof. 

Aradia lands next to her. “How far is it to the lift site?” 

“Three blocks.”

“We’re not going to make that,” Vriska exclaims. “They’re coming in faster than we can run.” 

“Our alternative being to stand and fight them,” Kanaya says, “you may have your pick of unfavorable situations.” 

Vriska levels a glare at her, and then sprints into a running leap off the next roof. Kanaya takes off after her. 

The soldiers are filling the eastern quarter of the city, taking Main Street, Squid Row, the tenement districts. There are screams, even though the rebellion has no forces there. The subjugglators are not discerning in their violence. They are neither benevolent nor focused, and their style of combat is not precise.

Terezi runs as fast as she can, but they’re still too slow. Hauling along Zinnet means that Vriska has to stop every few rooftops to adjust her grip, ensure that his weight doesn’t trip her up on the jumps, and Terezi’s barely tall enough to clear some of the gaps between buildings. A few of the alleyways are broad enough that they have to jump down onto the fire escapes before climbing back to the roof, a process which almost always involves landing on the wrong part of her body or banging some limb on the wire structure. Terezi comes close to falling more than once. The exertion gets to her after two blocks, has almost drained her by three. 

The juggalos approach in the streets, sluggish and unstoppable, like molten rock. The city deteriorates where they touch it, citizens dying in waves, storefronts and apartment windows crumpling under an onslaught of clumsy projectiles and clubs. Church war cries go up along the front lines. A chorus of _whoops_ chills Terezi, reminds her of a dimly lit ship and a grinning jury.

“Almost there,” Aradia encourages. “We’ll make it to the lift site before they will.” 

“Then where the fuck is the lift?”

“It’s on its way,” Kanaya tells Vriska. “It’ll be there.”

“We’re kind of on a tight schedule!”

“It’ll be there,” she repeats. 

Gunfire shatters a chimney in front of them, and Terezi flings up an arm to shield her face from the shrapnel. Kanaya swears and swerves to avoid it, hesitating before making her next jump. It can’t have been a subjugglator; the citizens must be engaging in the fight. 

Kanaya brings her wristtop to her mouth while she runs. “Tyrian Street and Seventh,” she says. “We’re approaching. Is the lift in place?”

Terezi can’t hear the answer, but Kanaya’s expression settles into something grim, so it can’t have been an affirmative. 

“We’re nearing the pickup site. The subjugglators are reaching our area. We need an evac here as soon as possible.”

“Tell them to get their asses in position if Karkat wants to see any of us alive,” Vriska snaps. “Now isn’t the time for _cordiality.”_

Kanaya ignores her, to her credit. She closes the connection on her wristtop and skids to a halt, sending gravel flying under her heels. “Karkat says they’re close.”

“How close?”

“I didn’t think to ask him for coordinates,” she snaps.

“They’re practically on fucking top of us! We need _now,_ not ‘close’!”

“I’m well aware!”

The smell of exhaust and durasteel flowers from the street below, and Terezi sags with relief. “Hey,” she says. “Lieutenant?”

_“What?”_

A cargo ship surfaces alongside the building. Its door hangs open and rows upon rows of soldiers peer out from inside, all bearing Feferi’s symbol on their uniform, a welcome reprieve from the scent of subjugglators and city guard. They’re packed into the interior, and the cargo ship is clearly struggling under the weight — its exhaust pipe belches smoke in thick, twining spires, but it’s still upright.

“Oh, thank _fuck_ ,” says Vriska, and shoves the Senaterror forward. “Catch.” 

Kanaya seizes the troll by his hips and _flings_ him onto the ship, where he’s just barely caught by the soldiers on board, and clears the gap between the buildings with one jump. She extends her hand and Aradia snags it, pulling herself up, and the speedlift groans from the extra weight, but it stays aloft. Vriska goes next, planting her hands on the deck and hauling herself onto the lift, and it greets the new burden with a discomfiting shudder. It dips slightly, and then rights itself, its engines blaring brighter from the strain. 

Terezi hesitates in boarding, and Vriska holds out her hand.

“Get the fuck on,” she snarls. “What are you waiting for?”

Terezi shoves her doubts aside and clasps Vriska’s wrist. 

Vriska heaves, and Terezi sails over the gap, landing on the edge of the ship. 

As her boots make contact with the floor, it begins to sink. Curses erupt from the cockpit, and Aradia wedges her way through the knot of trolls to help the engineers, but she won’t be able to do anything. There isn’t room. Carrying capacity for the standard cargo ship is around eight tons, and along with its normal cargo, there are at least twenty trolls onboard; they might get away with it if they jettisoned some of the resources, but there isn’t time to remove them. Zinnet would be the ideal candidate for removal, but without him, the entire mission is pointless, and hundreds of citizen deaths would be made meaningless. Nobody else is near enough to the edge to leave without prompting, and she couldn’t in her right mind ask anyone else to get off, at any rate. 

Terezi _knows_ the answer, and yet it still takes her a very long second to make her decision. This is easy calculus; why it takes her so long to solve the problem reflects poorly on her judgment.

“I forgive you,” she tells Vriska, because Terezi is many things, but she’d prefer not to be a hypocrite. 

Then she grabs Vriska by the chin and kisses her. Why she does this is unclear. It’s more of a goodbye than contact for contact’s sake; if she tried to say something, Vriska might stop her, and she doesn’t have any idea what she’d say, anyway. So she kisses her as gently as she can and figures that if this is the last time Vriska ever sees her, at least it’ll be memorable. 

Then Terezi plants her feet on the ledge and leaps backward off the edge of the ship. A moment of terrifying freefall is quickly cut off by her legs making jolting contact with the roof and buckling under the sudden weight. She turns the drop into a somersault and springs back up on her feet, light as ever. 

The lift corrects its course and starts rising steadily. She can hear someone shouting; it’s probably Vriska, from the sound of it, but as it moves faster and faster, it grows harder and harder to hear. She turns around so she doesn’t have to hear it and starts running in the opposite direction.

They’re still airlifting out troops from the southern gate. If she’s fast, she can make it there before the subjugglators reach it, and catch a ride from there. It’ll require her to be fast, but it’s not impossible. She clears another rooftop with a jump and stumbles, twisting her ankle, but she shakes it out and keeps her pace. 

She arrives back at the Senate building and pauses. There aren’t any streets that will take her to the southern quarter without bringing her through the heart of the territory where the juggalos are attacking, and going backward will draw her away from the main evacuation sites. There’s also the problem of visibility. She’s exposed, on the rooftops, vulnerable to gunfire or other kinds of aerial attacks, but there’s nowhere to hide, and if she went down to street level she’d meet the subjugglators head-on.

A rumbling comes from the building below her, and the foundations shake. She clings to the edge of the rooftop and plants her canesword in the gravel for balance as the building trembles like it’s in the arms of a quake, but as it dies down, whoops and shouts and footsteps erupt from the floors below. They swarm up the stairs.

She prepares to leap back over the way she came, but when she turns around, fire has engulfed the building behind her. Similar flames lick at houses all the way down the street, probably lit by the odd lamp knocking over or by a dropped cigarette. The drop to the ground is too far for her to make without doing serious injury to herself. There are no more options left.

Terezi lifts her chin and turns to face the door. 

Subjugglators burst onto the roof, hulking figures with abstract white shapes smeared over their faces in meaningless patterns, wielding bloodstained clubs of bone and rock. The reek of Faygo and greasepaint engulfs her and bile rises in her throat. Even more pile through the hallway behind, baying. Whooping. Their teeth are stained with warm colors.

For a moment, they stand there, regarding her. If they recognize her, they don’t suggest it. 

She draws her sword.

One of them leaps at her, and it triggers the rest of them to advance, as well. A wave of black and purple surges toward her, and she lunges to meet it.

The first one’s head comes off with a clean slice, spraying purple. He didn’t think to defend himself before realizing that she was on the offensive, and neither do the next two she kills, skewering them between the ribs together. When she tears her sword out and swings it around to cut a line through the stomach of a fourth, he’s caught on, and catches it on his club before countering with a swing at her head. She has to duck; she doesn’t have a chance of deflecting that kind of strength. This will be all acrobatics, if she has a chance at evading a deadly hit. 

Five and six come in quick succession. Six lashes out and she sidesteps, stabbing them through the shoulder while they bring their club down where she was a moment ago and crush one of their companions’ skulls. Turning them against each other becomes easy in such close proximity. One dodged stroke is another’s fatal strike. 

She fights mindlessly, retreating into the dark corner of her mind where there is neither pleasure nor pain. Against numbers like these, thinking would be a liability to her; anywhere she swings her sword is likely to make contact with flesh, so the sophistication of her technique doesn’t tend to matter. She kicks and claws and lashes out with her sword, blunt. She doesn’t know how much time passes, couldn’t even hazard a guess. The part of her mind that keeps track has burrowed away with her pain sensors, leaving nothing but the cool machinery of battle. It’s in moments like these that she can’t regret being a graduate of the Academy, an instrument of the Bar, because she’s alive only by the grace of that ability to shut down, shut _off,_ and act as a machine would.

Then, after what could have been a minute and what could have been an hour, she swings her sword out in a broad arc and doesn’t make contact with anything. She stops, spares a sniff for her surroundings, and finds that the scent of grapes almost blots out everything else. The bodies of myriad subjugglators surround her. She couldn’t take a step without making contact with one. None are moving. Nothing is moving except for her. 

In the same moment, her sensation returns, and the pain almost knocks her out. She’s bleeding heavily from her left arm, she’s probably dislocated her ankle, and there’s a new gash at the back of her head. Her torso sings with pain and it has to be bruised near-black. Blood dribbles from a split lip and she can feel swelling in her cheek. Underneath all of it, her muscles ache from use, a normal hurt made agonizing by its companions. The trance that swallowed her during the fight recedes, and she slumps over on her side. 

Someone hacks a laugh, and her head snaps up.

Three subjugglators remain on the roof across from her. They must have just emerged from the door, as she hadn’t smelled them before now. Clubs dangle from their hands, absolutely soaking with viscera, and none of them look fatigued. If she jumps to the street, the fall will kill her, or at least maim her badly enough that whoever comes after her won’t have a hard time finishing her off. Running past the subjugglators is hardly an option. She could take one of them, maybe — lunge, take them by surprise, catch them off their guard — but then the other two could land a blow to her head before she could take them out on the backswing. If she were fresh, she could probably have two on the ground before the third could press an advantage, but she’s not fast enough as it is; still, if she swings low, she can trip them up, maybe kill them while they’re down. So, then —

She squares her shoulders and lifts her sword. Defensive position. Her upper arm aches from the effort, and her sword is almost as bloody as their clubs, and she doesn’t pretend for one second that she’ll be able to do anything impressive with it. But she’d rather be drawn and quartered than die without a fight.

A subjugglator lifts his club, probably to try and throw it at her. She braces herself to duck.

There’s a snarl of machinery, and then a blade tears through the clowns in a neat, bisecting line, cleaving their top halves from the lower. They slump over in six distinct pieces, screaming, and die almost instantaneously.

Kanaya turns off her chainsaw and lets it hang at her side. Panting, she blows a wisp of hair out of her face and glares at Terezi.

“Next time there is an evac airlift nearby and accessible,” she says, “you will do me a favor and _get on it.”_

“Kanaya?”

“That is my name, yes. Do you have any other deductive assertions?” Kanaya steps over the bodies. “We will have to leave the city through the western gate. We have sympathizers in the outpost there who will help us.” 

“Thank you —”

“You are welcome.”

“How do you expect to get out?” Terezi gestures to the street below. The cacophony of battle swells, blood slicking the streets to rainbow instead of asphalt black, most of it red and orange and yellow, some of it green, almost none of it cooler than blue. “Even if we could make it to the western gate, the Church would be there first.”

“I do not know. It is the best chance we have.” Kanaya shoulders her chainsaw. “There is a chance we could make a run for the last transports.”

“We won’t make it in time.”

“I know. I would prefer to try than stand here and wait for someone to come and kill me.” 

Terezi scrubs her face with a hand. “Sure,” she says. “Why not.”

The screams have almost faded into background noise. Fires lick at the furthest line of tenements, creeping closer.

“You shouldn’t have come back for me,” Terezi says. “You could have left with the rest of them.” 

Kanaya frowns faintly. “Yes,” she says. “I could have.” 

“You didn’t.” 

“I didn’t,” she agrees. 

“How did you even get here, anyway?”

“I jumped.”

“You _jumped.”_

“Yes.”

“Out of a moving speedlift. A hundred feet off the ground.”

“I am more durable than most,” says Kanaya, and she might be smirking. It’s hard to say. 

Terezi leans on her sword. “Aradia says you’re a rainbow drinker,” she says, at length. “Is that what you mean?”

“Aradia is well informed.” 

“Ah.” Terezi blinks. “So, for example, do you need to —”

“I am not going to spend my last moments blundering through an explanation of my biological functions.”

“Probably a good idea.” 

More subjugglators surge around the ground floor of the building, breaking through the windows. They’ll be at the stairs at any moment, and on the roof in less than a minute. Terezi’s leg pangs. Everything pangs. She searches for an inch of herself that isn’t in some way hurting and comes up with nothing. 

“Thanks,” says Terezi. “For what it’s worth. It was an honor, et cetera, et cetera.” 

Kanaya shrugs. “It may not make much difference,” she says. “But I thought it was a shame to let you go alone.” 

They look out over the ledge of the building. The people on the streets are fighting each other. It’s hard to tell who’s a subjugglator and who’s a civilian, anymore. The bodies are knit together in a mob, black and grey writhing into each other with the occasional glint of steel, of metal, of broken glass. Very few are likely to survive this.

The snarl of an engine peals from the atmosphere, and they both lift their heads.

A ship lowers itself on the northern horizon, the silhouette of which Terezi could pick out among a hundred thousand. It glides around the rim of the sky, its windforce flattening the trees beneath it, and she turns to watch, her stomach sinking. 

The _Glorious Victory_ unleashes a bath of green light on the subjugglator ships, and they crumple like ice statues in an oven. The Church fleet burns.

Rows of Bar ships settle themselves behind the Church’s, elegant black cutters, each with glowing cannons, and open fire. Laser fire engulfs the few remaining vessels, setting them ablaze, and Terezi sees the numbers racking up in her mind’s eye: _a hundred dead; five hundred dead; one thousand dead, over the majority._

And then the Bar speedlifts detach themselves from the ships and zip down into the individual streets, unleashing cannonfire on the subjugglators congregated there. They die immediately, vaporized by the blast. 

“Terezi,” Kanaya says, tightly, “tell me what’s going on.” 

“Revenge.”

“For what?”

“The _Sound_ _Judgment.”_ She cranes her neck to watch a speedlift mow down three dozen subjugglators at once, charring a black line in the street where its laser fire burned the asphalt. “Revenge for the _Sound Judgment —_ a few weeks late, but all the same — thirty-seven legislacerators dead, twenty-one injured, nine missing, and the trial taken out of court. The Bar repays its debts in full.” 

She wants to cheer, an ancient, buried urge, an instinctive kind of clan instinct. They’re winning. Her people are _winning_. 

Terezi scrubs her nose with her sleeve and sniffs again. The wave of clowns is abating, flushing out the gate, fleeing the Capitol in thick swaths of black and purple. Those too entrenched in the fight to run begin to drop their weapons, whole packs at a time, clubs clattering on the streets.

A cry goes up among the rebel forces, swelling and branching into a chord as it spreads across the city. Terezi stumbles back from the ledge. 

“They’re winning,” she says. “The legislacerators are —”

“I saw.” Kanaya is glowing. Literally; her skin blazes with unnatural fluorescence, white as her teeth, which she bares in a faint, hesitant smile. “I don’t know how —”

“They’re staying in the speedlifts. The subjugglators can’t fly, they’re best in hand-to-hand — so they didn’t _engage_ on the ground, they just stayed in their ships and picked them off from the air — it’s smart — oh, my God. We’re not going to die.”

Kanaya laughs. “We’re not,” she agrees. Into her wristtop: “Karkat, we’re on the intersection of Main and Seventh; if you can send an airlift, I’m not sure the Counselor will be able to walk — yes — we’re all right, relatively speaking, all limbs in order —”

Terezi watches a lowblood who can’t be older than eight fire upon a subjugglator twice his size. There are people _everywhere,_ in the streets, on the gates, flooding from their apartments to yell and panic and celebrate, whichever they prefer; the Bar ships are lifting, ferrying their members off-planet. The Bar has no interest in lingering for the aftermath of a victory. The Bar has no interest in conquest.

“Look,” Terezi says, “they’re —”

Darkness seeps in at the edges of her vision, a void absence of scent overtaking her perception. Kanaya is saying something. She hears it as if through a sheet of glass, muffled, the sharper consonants numbed. She sways and drops to her knees. 

Kanaya’s voice trails off into silence. The thud of her bloodpusher overwhelms everything else. Her vision vanishes entirely, and she collapses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Oh, my waking world_  
>  _I leave you for a girl_  
>  _Cast away into this blight_  
>  _Swimming blindly through the night_  
>  —Troll The Family Crest, _Beneath the Brine_


	17. Bonds, Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“Trolls found the very concept of multi-quadrant love repulsive to their sensibilities. Only select few cases of such exist in documented history, and those are treated, by and large, as examples of perverse unorthodoxies. Note that trans-quadrant love is distinct from quadrant vacillation, the act of shifting between one quadrant and another, or “flipping,” the act of vacillating between one quadrant and its bordering opposite (pale to flushed, red to black, et cetera). Trans-quadrant love represented the combination of all four kinds of feeling — not a shift between one or two, but a greater, all-consuming emotion. Given the functionality of troll romance, it seemed unreasonable to them that one person would be expected to provide emotional stability, competitive rivalry, mediation, and sexual love simultaneously.”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

When Terezi wakes up, she cannot see. For a gut-wrenching moment, she thinks her nose is broken. Her heartrate ratchets up exponentially, and a rapid beeping splits hear auriculars, and she starts to thrash, only to find herself tangled in some kind of restraint. This particular revelation fails to calm her. 

Then a nebulous blob of dark red slides across the corner of her periphery, horns stubby and ramrod straight — familiar, but no more comforting for that familiarity.

Terezi exhales hard through her nose, clearing it of the remaining dried blood, and the shape of Sikhir Tanata sharpens into focus.

She swears and thrashes. She’s floating in an upright, clear medicuperacoon, locked behind a sheet of transparent plexiglass. The sopor dulls her senses, but if she can get some leverage on the side, she’ll be able to come out swinging. With enough effort behind it, she could probably knock Tanata to the floor, and after that, a well-placed jab to the neck might even knock her out — that’s assuming she hasn’t brought a weapon, which she probably _has_ — she doesn’t have her canesword, doesn’t have a clue where her canesword is; she might be able to break the cupe and use a shard of glass, if she could just get the fucking sopor out of her system —

Tanata sidles across her field of vision and taps something on a pad beside the cupe wall. The slime stirs and starts sinking, draining through tiny holes in the bottom of the tank. Terezi is carried down with it, her feet making gentle contact with the tile floor. Unused to her body weight, they buckle, and she slumps against the plexiglass, huddling into a crouch. As the last dregs of the sopor gurgle, the door to the cupe slides open, and Terezi’s bloodpusher skyrockets. She lurches back from the entrance, leaning against the wall for support to shove herself upright.

She lashes out, but it’s slow, unsophisticated, and Tanata catches her wrist without difficulty. Leaning forward, the soldier grasps Terezi under her armpits and hauls her from the empty cupe. Terezi kicks at her, landing a blow in the soft meat of her abdomen, an injury which Tanata meets with a grunt, but she doesn’t drop Terezi. Instead, she deposits her briskly on a cushioned platform beside the medicuperacoon and straps down her wrist with brisk efficiency, performing a similar procedure on her ankles.

“What,” Terezi croaks, and the word crawls out of her throat like the sound of a dying animal. She clears it and tries again. “Whatever you’re doing,” she says, “look — you —”

“Calm down,” Tanata says flatly. “Your heart rate monitor is going to bring the medicullers back, and if they come back, they’re going to drug you up again.”

Terezi’s tongue stumbles over her protest. Her bloodpusher slows somewhat. At least she isn’t trying to kill her immediately. Perhaps she can be reasoned with. There has to be something the damn troll wants.

Tanata reaches over for something on a tray and Terezi has to strain her nose to make out what it is. When the soldier returns, she’s holding a scalpel the length of Terezi’s palm, and Terezi heaves, straining violently against the restraints on the platform.

“Jesus Christ,” Tanata says, lifting her eyes to the ceiling. “What the fuck are you doing.” 

“Listen,” Terezi entreats. “You don’t have to do this.”

“If you want your bandages changed with any kind of goddamn efficiency, then yes, I do.” Tanata glares. “If you don’t hold still, I’m going to open a vein by accident. I’m not going to kill you with a surgical tool.”

Terezi stills. She regards the instrument suspiciously, but she doesn’t attempt to wriggle out of the cuffs when Tanata reaches over and starts cutting away the bandages laced up and down Terezi’s right leg. 

“To the point,” Tanata adds, “if I was going to kill you, I could have done it at any point over the course of the past four nights. When you were legitimately incapable of fighting back. So maybe — and consider this carefully — I don’t actually intend to kill you.”

“Four?”

“That’s what you focus on. Okay. Sure.” Tanata sets aside the scalpel and gathers the dirty bandages in a heaping armful, dumping them in the wastebasket at her side. “Four nights,” she confirms. “Three days. Good thing you woke up when you did, one of the medicullers was considering giving you a shock to the pusher to try bringing you back to the land of the living.” 

“Why,” she says, still working out the feeling of her mouth. “Why am I —”

“Here?” Tanata snorts. “In the medical wing? Do you feel like you’re in optimal health, Counselor?”

She can’t feel anything, to be quite honest, but enough slime still coats her skin that she can’t summon an eloquent reply. 

“The answer to that is no,” Tanata informs her. “By the way. You lost enough blood to feed a rainbow drinker for a perigee and you’ve barely got fewer broken bones than you do intact ones. Not to mention a concussion and blunt force trauma to about everywhere.” She grunts. “You could’ve made my job a lot easier if you’d been handier with that sword.”

“I’m alive,” Terezi points out, feeling mildly offended.

“By a hair, and because I’m a goddamn wizard at stitches.”

Terezi breathes deeply for the first time since leaving the cupe. She’s alone with Tanata in a long, white room, lined with medicuperacoons and cushioned platforms, all overwhelmingly smelling of bleach. The whole place has been sterilized to hell and back. Rectangular lights dangle from the ceiling, and her nose twitches from irritation at the unabated glare. 

“The last time we met,” she grits out, “you tried to kill me.” 

“And you almost repaid the favor,” Tanata says evenly. When Terezi doesn’t reply, a wry smile tugs at the corner of her lips. “You can say ‘you started it.’ That would be appropriate, given the circumstances.” 

“I shouldn’t have done that.” 

“I wasn’t in your office because I wanted a fair fight. You responded in kind. As far as I see it, that’s measure for measure.” Tanata pulls out a roll of gauze and lifts Terezi’s leg to bind it again. “I mean, it’s not like I expected you to pull a gun, but that was my own shortcoming, not your misstep for defending yourself.” 

Terezi lets the point drop. Bickering with the soldier over semantics, in this environment, seems a poor idea. 

Her nose itches, and her fingers twitch to scratch it, halted by the restraint. “Please release my hand,” she says, as politely as she can.

Tanata glances sidelong at her. “You have to stay still.” 

“All right. I will.” She adds, “My nose is itching.”

Tanata huffs a laugh and then thumbs the latch on Terezi’s left cuff, freeing her hand. Then she returns to the task of wrapping up Terezi’s injury.

The cut on her leg is gruesome. It snakes up from mid-shin and curls around her kneecap, ending somewhere low on her thigh, and weeps blood through at least three dozen neat stitches. The skin around it is stained teal, either from unwashed blood or subdermal bruising, a smear of green over blotchy dark grey. She doesn’t even want to know what her other wounds look like. 

“Tanata,” she says, slow.

Tanata ties off the bandage and cuts off the surplus. “There,” she says. “Take this.” She takes a pill bottle from the try and shakes two white capsules into Terezi’s hand.

Terezi squints at them.

“It’s a painkiller. I would give you an IV, but I’m shit at aiming the needle and the weakest stuff we have are all opiates, which I don’t figure you’d like.”

Opiates are horribly uncomfortable; they blunt her senses to the point where she can barely smell anything clearly, and she hasn’t used them in sweeps. She shakes her head and knocks back both pills dry.

“There’s a good patient. Drink some water.” Tanata hands her a flask and glowers at her until she sips from it. “You’re not supposed to eat anything, by the way. You’re too fresh out of surgery.” 

“Surgery?”

“For your neck. They missed the vertebral column by half an inch, quarter of an inch. One wrong step and you’d have been dead on impact.”

Terezi sets down her water and tries to push herself upright on the cushioned platform. Tanata’s hand comes down on her chest and shoves her back. “No,” she says irritably. “You’re supposed to be resting.” 

“I can rest while sitting up.”

“I can’t check the stitches on your abdomen while you’re sitting up, you insufferable pedant. Lie down or I’ll sedate you into a coma.”

Terezi compromises by bracing herself against the wall while Tanata goes about inspecting a thick line of stitches crossing over her lower stomach. At length, she demands, “Why are you here?”

“Because it’s my job?” Tanata gives her a flat, sidelong look. “I’m paid to sew you together and make sure you don’t die. I’m also pretty sure your moirail would kill me if you died while I’m on shift, so don’t mistake this for altruism.”

“You’re a mediculler?”

Tanata rolls her eyes. “Close enough,” she says.

“You were on a mission with basic infantry.”

“Basic infantry still gets hurt.” She yanks Terezi’s shirt back down and returns to her table of instruments. “Most units in the Fleet have a medical specialist. Someone to keep the injured alive until a mediculler can decide whether they’re worth the price of supplies.” 

“Karkat said you were a soldier.”

“I _am._ I was. I had a gun, and I used it. I also know how to put in stitches. I contain multitudes.” 

“Oh.” Terezi looks around. “Are the medicullers gone?”

“All three of them,” Tanata says tightly, and Terezi blinks.

“Three?”

“Mediculler is a high-ranking, high-paying job. Only available to greenbloods and up. It’s hard to convince someone like that to defect, and there aren’t a whole lot of them in the galaxy to begin with. We used to have more, but they went offworld after the last Conscription.”

Terezi says, “I still don’t understand why you’re helping me.”

Tanata pauses in cleaning off her scalpel. Her back is turned to Terezi, but her shoulders sag minutely.

“It’s my job,” she repeats.

“That doesn’t mean you had to.”

“Did you not get the bit about your moirail killing me?”

Terezi remains silent. It isn’t an answer. 

Tanata turns around and folds her arms. 

“Do you know what kinds of trolls go into the infantry?” 

Terezi doesn’t reply. Tanata continues anyway. “Trolls who can’t do anything else. Trolls who don’t qualify for any higher-order profession, for some reason or another, and didn’t score high enough on the aptitude tests to go into any of the specialty corps. It’s where they throw all the useless trolls that they can’t justify culling. Training takes all of five minutes, they hand you a gun, and then you’re sent out to the most miserable, shitholes of planets in the galaxy, where you shoot at half-sentient aliens and live on dry rations until you either get promoted or die. Most trolls don’t get promoted.”

Terezi inches her way upright. Tanata doesn’t stop her.

“I met Mariat when I was in training,” she says. “We were assigned to the same squadron. He was the medical specialist, originally, until he got promoted to Staff Sergeant, and they made me replace him. We were strangers when they assigned us, but you get close with your squadron, you know? They’re the only people you ever interact with, besides your commanding officers. It’s probably pack instinct, or some bullshit.” She lifts the scalpel to the light, examines it, and sets it aside.

“He was the one who wanted to leave. I was — I wasn’t all right, but I was good at taking orders and I had a steady hand. I thought I stood a chance of climbing the ranks. I thought he did, too, for that matter, but we were rustbloods. He knew that we wouldn’t be going anywhere. He got wind of the revolution by talking to an escaped Sufferite that we were sent to track down. I thought it was bullshit. But he had a way of talking you into things, a way of convincing. It was goddamn dangerous, the things he could talk you into.” She smiles, wry. “He got the whole squadron wrapped up in it. All nine of us. He got into our heads. Talking about equality. He didn’t give one shit or another about the Sufferer, and neither did I. He was just excited that somebody was making a real effort at taking it all down. Pan-addled nooksniffer probably just got a kick out of the idea that someone else out there dreamed as big as he did.”

Terezi watches her throw a teal-stained needle in the trash with unnecessary force.

“Staged an escape attempt,” she says. “All nine of us. Seven of them died in the attempt.” 

“I’m sorry,” says Terezi, after a pause, when it seems she isn’t going to continue.

“I don’t need your pity. I’m not saying this so you feel _sorry_ for me.” Workstation now clear, Tanata braces her hands on the tray. “I’m not an idealist,” she says. “I’m not optimistic about the General’s chances. This isn’t the first time someone’s tried to engage with the Empire. I was here for Mariat, because the dumbass would’ve got himself killed unless someone was there to remind him how to hold the damn gun. And in the end, he died because he was an idiot who would’ve volunteered to duel the Handmaid if he thought it would _help_ somebody.”

Terezi feels the urge to apologize again, and quells it.

“And,” Tanata concludes, “he’s dead. So I don’t have much of a reason to be here, I guess.” 

She turns back to Terezi. “It was for you, for a while,” she says. “I was going to kill you.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Tanata picks up the scalpel and twirls it between her fingers. The movement is well-practiced, idle. Bladekind, Terezi guesses; probably a small specibus, like a knife. Maybe the one she had used during the assassination attempt.

“When they wheeled you in,” she says, “your moirail almost killed me. She was trying to get into the hospital wing, and you were in crit condition. It was a sterile environment. Visitors weren’t allowed. I was the unlucky fuck who got sent to deal with her, and she almost shot me trying to get past. I was _this_ close to tranquilizing the bitch, I don’t care whose slurry she crawled out of.”

“I am familiar with the feeling,” Terezi offers, and a smile flickers over Tanata’s face, surprised and amused.

“I don’t really know why,” Tanata says. “Someone else would have sewed you up, probably. Maybe even someone better at it than me. But I happened to be on shift, and you happened to get yourself beaten up, and maybe I didn’t want to have to deal with being indirectly responsible for you dying. It would’ve been piss-poor revenge, anyway — letting someone else do the job, or attacking while you were unconscious.”

“Bad form,” Terezi agrees. Tanata nods.

“I’m going to see the war out,” she says. “I’m going to stick around until either the General dies or the Empress does. Mostly because I don’t know what I’d do, otherwise. I’m marked as a traitor. I don’t have a career in the Empire left, and no way to get off-planet, no place to go if I could. I’m stuck here. And you know what, when the war’s over — no matter what happens — I’m flying out over the sea and dropping ten tons of combustibles down that thing’s throat. The Heiress can suck my bulge if she has a problem with it.”

Tanata lifts her chin, seeming to expect an argument. Terezi shrugs.

“I’ll help,” she says.

“Fine.”Tanata looks down. “And once that’s done, I’m gone. You and I, all bets are off. I’m not going to come after you. I’m done with the Law of Blood. But you let me go. Don’t come after me. I want you to make sure nobody else does, either. Wipe my legal records, take me off the roster, erase my history with the Movement. I don’t want you coming after me, either. I don’t want anything to do with you or your new world order. Can you manage that?” 

“Yes,” Terezi agrees, belatedly, hesitantly. “But —”

“Then we’re square,” Tanata insists. “No debts. No grudges.” 

“No debts,” Terezi repeats.

“Good.” Tanata taps something into her wristtop and flips a switch on the side of the platform, releasing Terezi’s cuffs. “From now on, stay out of my medical wing.” 

Then she walks out of the room, leaving Terezi alone, confused, and in a considerable degree of pain.

On Tanata’s way out, she shuffles around someone lingering in the eve of the door. The scent of raspberry flowers there, and Terezi shoves herself upright. 

“Terezi,” Aradia cries, stepping through the door as it closes in Tanata’s wake.

“Aradia?”

The pilot crosses the block quickly. Before Terezi can muster a wave, Aradia’s bounded up onto the cushioned platform and flung her arms around Terezi’s neck; she squeezes tightly, a cholerbear hug that shoves the breath from Terezi’s lungs.

“Stitches,” Terezi gasps. “Aradia — Aradia, stitches, stitches —”

“Oh!” Aradia recoils. She lifts her hands in the air, pantomiming surrender. “Sorry. Sorry!”

“Fine,” Terezi wheezes. “Thanks.” 

“Sorry, again.” Aradia wriggles backward and sits on the edge of the platform, legs folded. “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up for nights. We figured you were dead.” 

“Nearly,” Terezi says, wincing. She massages her neck, where her fingers meet another rough-hewn scar. “Generally, the best strategy for fighting a subjugglator is _don’t_. _”_

“Noted.” Aradia gives her a once-over. “Are you all right now, though?”

“Probably.” Terezi rubs a hand down her face, and surprise sparks instinctively in her gut when she doesn’t find her glasses there. “My canesword,” she says, suddenly. “Did anybody —”

“It’s in your quarters.” Aradia smiles, gracious. “They took it with you when they airlifted you out.”

Terezi exhales heavily with relief. “Good to know,” she says. “And Kanaya —”

“Fine. All of us had to spend a night in the med wing, for superficial injuries, but you were the only one here long term.”

“Zinnet?”

“In custody. Currently being interrogated about the Fleet’s positioning and future battle plans.”

“They won’t get anything out of him,” Terezi says immediately. “They don’t tell Senaterrors anything important, and if they did, he’d have had a tighter guard — they should be asking him about Ampora, instead. He’ll know the whereabouts and activities of his mentor. Who do they have interrogating him?”

“I don’t know. It’s probably Kanaya, if not Karkat.”

“He’ll do a bad job,” Terezi says. She swings her legs over the side of the platform, ignores the wash of prickles over her skin as the blood starts moving again. “I’ll go. I’ll be able to get it out of him —”

“Uh, no,” Aradia says, pushing her gently back onto the platform. “You’re going nowhere.”

“Karkat couldn’t question someone’s favorite color out of them, much less crack a bureaucretin. Interrogations is a _class_ at the Academy. I’m much better at it than him.” 

“Sure,” Aradia concedes. “But you’ve just come out of the medicuperacoon. You aren’t a threat to anybody.”

“I’ve threatened people in poorer health than this,” Terezi snorts, and Aradia muffles a giggle.

“Of course you have. But probably not well.”

Terezi glowers at her.

“Remember when you respected my authority as your commanding officer? I remember that. I miss those days.”

“I still respect you,” Aradia laughs.

“Your lies demean us both.” 

“Uh huh.” She smiles and pulls a databook from her satchel, extending it to Terezi. “This is yours. Figured I’d bring you something to do while you’re in confinement.” 

“I take it all back. You’re an Empress among trolls, Megido.” 

“It took you long enough,” she says, satisfied, and sits back as Terezi opens the databook.

Her inbox has been flooded. Work piles up quickly, and apparently there are a number of waivers she needs to sign to approve her surgeries. She deletes all of the ones from her legal team and ignores the ones from Karkat’s underlings. If any of it was urgent, they wouldn’t have bothered sending messages about it to someone in a coma. 

There’s also a message from someone in PR, and she licks the databook twice to be sure that she’s read the byline correctly. 

“What does PR want with me?”

“Ah,” Aradia says. “That’s an interesting one.” 

She takes the databook back from Terezi and examines the message, one eyebrow arching with interest. “Yeah,” she says, “yeah, I thought so. Some of their cybersecurity team found security camera footage of you fighting the subjugglators in the city cameras. They were going to delete it, to erase our tracks, but they figured they’d send it over to our publicity team before wiping it out forever. It’s fairly impressive.” She hands it back. “You’re something of a showman, Counselor.”

“What do you mean, showman? My style of combat is practical.”

A smirk pulls at Aradia’s mouth. “Have you ever watched it?”

“No.”

“It’s impressive.” 

Terezi wriggles into a more comfortable position and examines the message. It’s a briskly worded missive asking for permission to use the footage in a Movement promotional video, and signed by some upper-management busybody she’s never heard of. 

“I still don’t think they’d want it,” she says, finally. “But it’s theirs, I suppose.” She types out a brief note of assent and sends it, closing her inbox thereafter.

“They’ll appreciate that.” 

Terezi shrugs and pulls up a browser. “I don’t care one way or another.” She taps in the address for a news site and waits for the page to load. “So. What developments while I was out?”

Aradia glances down at the databook cautiously. “Ah,” she says. “Well. Some things.”

“I had presumed that ‘some things’ occurred. It’s fascinating how time works that way. Anything important?”

“Yes,” she says uncertainly. “But you won’t like it.”

Alarm prods Terezi’s bloodpusher into a higher gear. “What do you mean? What happened?”

“You know that the Bar was responsible for the victory in the Capitol,” Aradia begins, and that does absolutely nothing to soothe Terezi at all.

“Stop being cryptic,” she demands. “Tell me in Alternian, Megido. Spit it _out.”_

“You don’t need to — hold on, you might not want to —”

The page loads. A video pops up across the top, a looping feed of a troll in a high-collared teal coat climbing the ramp of a giant black starship. A subjugglator unit flanks her, marching ahead of her and behind; the troll’s hands aren’t bound, but that’s the only dignity she’s been spared. Her horns rise from her head in even, parallel lines.

A headline scrolls across the bottom of the page: MAGISTRAGEDY KISHAR TAKEN INTO CUSTODY ABOARD CHURCH FLAGSHIP.

Terezi’s bloodpusher forgets what it’s supposed to be doing. When it restarts itself, it almost drowns out the sound of Aradia calling her name with increasing insistence. 

“Terezi,” she repeats. “Listen, Terezi —”

“I have to go,” Terezi says. Her lips feel numb. She shoves herself off the platform and almost topples to the ground, her legs unused to bearing her full weight after full nights spent suspended in sopor. Staggering to her feet, she bats away Aradia’s hands when they try to assist her.

“Do what?” Aradia steps between Terezi and the door. Her tone is probing, ginger. “This is why I waited — look. What do you think you’re going to do?”

“Something,” she insists, trying to step around Aradia. “Get out of my way.”

“This isn’t helping,” Aradia says, grabbing Terezi’s shoulders. “Stop it. You have questions, right? Ask them.”

Terezi stops struggling, but she does not return to the platform. “When,” she asks. It is all she trusts herself to say. 

“Yesterday night. It’s recent.” 

“How,” she begins, and catches herself. “Why,” she corrects, “why would she allow this to happen?”

Aradia’s lips press together. She can’t answer that, Terezi knows she can’t. Terezi backs off and wobbles dangerously on her feet. “There’s no reason,” she spits, and catches herself verging on fury. She hauls herself back into rational territory and tries again. “There is very little reason,” she says, “for the Magistragedy to allow herself to be taken into custody. It would be an allowance, not a surrender. The Magistragedy has a fully equipped staff of trained fighters, all of whom would be more than capable of holding their own against a subjugglator squad. Unless there was an all-out battle, but _that_ would have been headline news, not this.” Terezi brandishes the databook. “She allowed it. That’s the only explanation. But she’s vulnerable on the _Miracle._ That flagship carries the Grand Highblood, it’s a living wreath of chucklevoodoos, she can’t — she can’t possibly think that there’s any room to maneuver diplomatically, not after what’s happened —”

“Do you care what happens to her?”

Terezi freezes. “No,” she says, immediately, and under normal circumstances she doesn’t consider herself a bad liar, but it’s a very poorly executed lie. 

Aradia, ever gracious, doesn’t call her on it. “All right.”

“I don’t.” Terezi’s hand flexes at her side, reaching for her cane, like a phantom limb. “I care — I care because a lot of people, innocent people, have their fates wrapped up with the Magistragedy’s.”

“Innocent people,” Aradia repeats. “Legislacerators.”

“They’re not —” What Terezi was about to say would have been patently misleading on a number of counts and she reins it back. Instead, she tries, “The Bar has a chance.” As Aradia’s expression doesn’t change, she adds, “The Bar saved us. Between them and the Church, one of them has a rigid code of conduct, and I’d prefer not to see a legal system run entirely by juggalos.” 

“They’re our enemy.”

“Yes, I know that,” Terezi snaps. “That doesn’t mean that what’s happening to them is right.”

Aradia is looking at her strangely. Terezi again attempts to sidestep her, and is again blocked. 

“I don’t have some misplaced faith in the Magistragedy,” she says. “She’s not a good person. But there’s a right way to deal with her, and it isn’t being gutted by some juggalo.”

“As I see it, they’re taking each other out.”

“The Church is tyrannical,” Terezi exclaims. “They don’t have an interest in _justice!_ They want revenge for the trial, and they’re taking it in the pettiest way possible!”

“The enemy of my enemy,” Aradia suggests, although with less confidence than a moment ago. 

“Is another enemy! Who also wants to kill us, and whose victory over the aforementioned enemy should not be celebrated, as it expands the reach of their power beyond the confines imposed by the first enemy and enables them to pursue us without regulation!”

“I don’t think,” Aradia begins.

“This is my fault,” Terezi says, without thinking.

Aradia frowns. “That’s not true,” she says. “It’s a power struggle. It’s not your fault.” 

She’s already had this argument with Vriska, and she doubts Aradia, who has perhaps a fraction of Vriska’s bullheadedness and only a quarter of her audacity, will make much of a difference. “The Bar is wrong,” she says. “It needs to be reformed. Perhaps destroyed entirely. I don’t — I’m not loyal to it. I haven’t been for a while. But it deserves a better ending than this.” 

“I don’t know that it deserves anything,” Aradia says, guarded.

“That’s — fair,” Terezi says. Her frustration mounts. “That’s fair of you, and you’re not erroneous to think so, but you wanted to know why I care. And now you do.” Terezi rakes a hand through her hair. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Which part?”

“Any of it! Why the Church would do this, instead of, I don’t know, a massacre — now, of all times — and how they even knew to attack the Capitol in the first place! The Bar, yes, I could understand — to spite the Church, revenge for the _Sound Judgment —_ but why now? How did they know we would be there?”

“Security cameras,” Aradia says, somewhat sudden.

“What?” 

“There are security cameras in the Senate,” she says. “Someone must have recognized you.”

“And they called the Church? Because they noticed a criminal running around? That doesn’t make sense.”

Aradia cocks her head. “You have a bounty on your head,” she says, slow. “From the Church and the Bar, separately. You didn’t . . . know?”

“A bounty?”

“Six hundred aureii for information on your whereabouts,” Aradia informs her. “A thousand for the actual product. Whoever made that call is rolling in gold right now.” 

“How do _you_ know about it?” Terezi sways and Aradia catches her by the elbow. “And — a thousand aureii — a _thousand?”_

“There’s an Imperial register of bounties, I used to serve under a bounty hunter. Yes, a thousand. They’ve upped your price.” 

“A thousand,” Terezi says weakly. “How much for Vriska?”

“The same.”

“Ha,” she says. She’d be smug if she weren’t too shell-shocked to consider it. “The same. She’ll throw a fit.” 

“Probably. ” 

She drags a hand down her face. “Now I can’t show my face in public,” she says. “Fantastic. Lovely! An ideal situation. Neither can Vriska, for that matter, and she’s going to go stir-crazy if she has to stay in the compound for longer than a week. _A thousand aureii.”_

“Yes.”

“And if we show our faces in public again, someone’s going to bring down the whole damn Church on our heads.” 

“That seems likely.”

“This is a terrible situation. Actively, incredibly terrible. I shouldn’t have woken up. One thousand. Handmaid help me.”

“I’m sorry. If it makes it any better, Karkat expressed the same sentiment upon hearing about it, albeit louder.” 

“It doesn’t, actually. And where the _fuck_ is Vriska?”

It wrenches itself out of her. She’d been intentionally dodging the question, unwilling to acknowledge its urgency, terrified of the answer; but now, spoken, it consumes her, a spark tossed onto the mound of dry kindling that is the whole miserable situation. Anger engulfs her thinkpan like wildfire. Where the fuck _is_ Vriska, Vriska who apparently almost killed a medic trying to get into the hospital wing while Terezi was in surgery, but has chosen the exact moment that Terezi became conscious to make herself scarce —

Aradia’s scent plunges into a pungent blend of acidic frustration and sharp, uncanny regret. “Not here,” she says, the two words disjointed by her hesitation. 

“What do you mean, not here?” Terezi braces herself against the wall to avoid the embarrassment of toppling into Aradia’s arms. “Where did she go?”

“She’s on a recruiting mission. Karkat sent her away.”

“Ah,” Terezi says, and then, less agitated: “Remind me to trip him down a flight of stairs, or something.”

“It wasn’t his fault. She kept moping around and harassing the medicullers, making a scene. Something had to be done with her, or she would’ve started a brawl just to entertain herself.” 

“She’s not that bad.”

“Your lies demean us both,” Aradia says flatly. “It’s only a one-night mission, anyway, she’ll be back before sunrise.”

“If there’s a bounty on her head, it’s not safe —”

“It’s to a rustblood community,” Aradia soothes. “They won’t call. Half of them are too young to know about the bounty at all, and they’ll be out of there before any of them can call the subjugglators.”

Terezi grinds her teeth but abides it. Aradia says, gentle: “She didn’t want to go.”

“Didn’t she?” 

“No. Karkat ordered it. I know I’m not —” She pauses and collects herself. “I’m not here to be your substitute moirail,” she says, businesslike, “but I’m here. If you need anything. In the most platonic sense those words can be uttered.” 

Terezi lays out the facts of the situation and examines them for a moment. There are very few avenues open to her, and none of them are attractive. The ideal situation would be to talk to Vriska. Or yell at Vriska. One of the two. Neither of which are possible, as she isn’t _here._

“I would like my cane,” she says. “And my uniform, if you please.” 

“Why?”

“Because,” Terezi says, “I am not going to have a meeting with the General in a hospital gown.”

 

* * *

 

Karkat’s voice can be heard through the door to his office. It pitches with special voracity when he employs profanity, and she makes the tactical decision to refrain from intruding.

However, after twenty minutes, she considers that he may have the breath to continue as such for a considerable amount of time, and changes her mind. 

She lifts her cane’s head, about to knock, and the door flies open.

Karkat blinks, surprise writing itself over his face in the split second before he recognizes her, and his face settles into a well-treaded scowl.

“Why is it,” he demands, “that every time you get involved with something, it goes up like an oil spill in a coal factory?”

She considers this. 

“It’s exactly our luck,” she points out, and he sighs, conceding the point.

“Don’t I fucking know it. What are you doing out of the hospital?”

“Checking in.”

“To do what? Hobble around and yell at your interns?” He starts walking. She tags along, half a step behind.

“To assist in the interrogation of your prisoner. And inquire as to the whereabouts of my moirail.” 

He groans. “Of fucking course.”

“What.”

“I’ll have you know that I was well on my way to not thinking about Serket, which is as close as I get to fucking Nirvana these days. Can’t you let me have this moment of serenity?”

“You’ve never been serene in your life,” Terezi objects, and he snorts, as if to say, _Point._

He heads down a side corridor, this one narrow and lined with precious few doors. These walls don’t have name plates on them, or windows, or decorations of any kind. The air carries a chill. It reminds Terezi faintly of the cellblocks on the _Pyrexia._

“We evacuated a couple hundred citizens before the fires got the rest of the city. They’re staying with the rest of the infantry until we can figure out what the fuck to do with them. Hopefully some will convert. I need some good news.” He scrolls down the information on his databook furiously. “And what the fuck does my PR department want with you?”

“I don’t know. Mine is not the face one wants headlining a revolution.”

“What do they want an interview for, then?”

“A question probably best addressed to them, not me.” 

“Well, do it, anyway. I can’t afford to have them pissed at me.”

Terezi scoffs. “I’m not going to be useful,” she protests. “I’m not an acterroress.” 

“You’re a lawbug. Close enough.” 

“Groundbreaking. Original. Hilarious. You are the first person to make that joke in the history of anything, ever. Congratulations, General. You are the best comedian. It is you.”

“Jesus, what crawled up your nook and died?” Karkat gives her an unimpressed glance. “Your moirail hasn’t been gone that long.” 

“One form of entertainment is infinitely more dignified than the other. What would I even say? I’m not the ideal candidate.” 

“Fucking humor them,” Karkat snaps. “We could use some good press. News gets out that the Capitol debacle happened because we dropped some wanted trolls into the middle of things, and recruiting is gonna get real fucking hard. I don’t need to explain what a shithive that would be.” 

“No, not at all.”

“Reputation is pretty much everything.” He massages his brow. “Not that ours is that fucking great, presently. Setting the Capitol on fire is a hell of an introduction to the public ocular, and we could probably sell it as a lot more meaningful and symbolic if we’d actually meant to do it.” He sighs. “We lost a hell of a lot of people. The fact that _you_ got out alive was no small surprise to me, or anyone else, for that matter.”

“The news may overlook us entirely, as a matter of fact. The Church and the Bar are far bigger news than one missing Senaterror, unfortunately.” She’s reluctant to probe the subject, but she feels he ought to know. “The Magistragedy’s been taken custody aboard the _Miracle.”_

“Great. Fucking great. We’re not even top headlines. It’s a miracle we’ve still got allies on Alternia.”

“And in the Squamiger System,” Terezi says. 

“What?”

His brow furrows.

“The banking clans,” she prompts. 

Karkat sucks in a breath, and she thinks she’s pressed the wrong nerve. She prepares to backpedal. 

Then he lets out a bellowing laugh. It’s so loud that several trolls down the hallway instantaneously drop their files, scattering paperwork across the tile, and it reverberates over the walls. Karkat’s head lolls back against the wall, the last wheezes eking out of his windpipe. He doesn’t laugh much.

“And the banking clans,” he agrees. “Great. Fantastic. You’re right. If all else fails, we’ve got the fucking banking clans.” 

She smiles thinly. He wipes a ruddy pink tear from the corner of his eye. 

“You can interrogate Zinnet,” he says. “Wait a couple of days, though. We’ve just got the poor shit to stop screaming, he’s in no state for questioning.” 

“Thank you, sir.” 

“Yeah, whatever,” he says. He waves off his own generosity like it’s embarrassing. “And keep your fucking moirail under control.” 

“I don’t know what you mean, sir.” 

He rolls his eyes and swings around the corner, not waiting for her to keep up. “Yeah, you do,” he calls over his shoulder, and accelerates to the pace where she can’t keep up with him. It’s all very dramatic. She finds small recompense in flipping him off behind his back.

 

* * *

 

The PR department lives on the top floor, and swallows the entirety of it. The moment Terezi sets foot on the floor, she’s engulfed by a set of assistants who wheel her along into one of the filming studios and set upon her with preparatory materials. They give her a different set of clothes to wear in front of the camera — a teal blouse, just a shade off her Bar uniform, and adjust her Signless pendant so it sits prominently at the hollow of her throat. When she objects, she’s met with a flurry of complaint, so immediate and vociferous that she quiets down only to avoid being subjected to their further attentions.

Her hair is paid more attention than it’s ever been given in its life, washed and combed out carefully under the hands of a stylist with a mop of blue curls springing so tall it hides their horns. It’s grown out considerably. Now it brushes the bottom of Terezi’s shoulder blades, long enough to braid, eager to fall in Terezi’s eyes when she lowers her head. Although she hadn’t noticed it, her horns have grown, too, the dark red color climbing steadily. Her skin has darkened at least three shades. Age marks itself in the changing hue of her features, setting her all the more starkly apart from the grey-skinned pupae that buzz around the studio. 

The interviewer is a plump greenblood with horns that twine around each other in the shape of a caduceus. Her hair is twisted up around it like a beehive. When Terezi sits down in a chair opposite her, she plasters a thousand-watt smile on her face, revealing her fangs to be filed flat; Terezi attempts to avert her attention.

A camera spins around and focuses on Terezi’s face. A set of lights blaze down from above. 

“Morning,” says the interviewer, brightly. “Please state your name for the camera.” 

“Terezi Pyrope. Aren’t they going to know that, anyway? Is that not apparent?”

“Could you describe your affiliation with the Movement?” The interviewer’s gaze settles unfavorably on Terezi. She has not endeared herself. Considering the interviewer’s vocation, this is perhaps not the most strategic decision Terezi has ever made.

“Legal consultant,” she says. “Operative? Is that a role? I go on missions.” 

“Right. Let’s start with the basics.” The interviewer crosses her legs, brisk. “What was your assigned job in the Empire?”

“Legislacerator,” Terezi says blankly. “Wouldn’t most people watching the broadcast know that?”

“We make a point to cover our bases. How old were you when you defected?”

“It happened maybe two perigees ago.”

The interviewer says nothing.

Terezi exhales shortly. “Seventeen.” 

“That’s fairly old.”

“Not for a tealblood.” 

“Ah.” The interviewer can’t be much greener than Terezi. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing she would forget.

“Can you describe your culling offense?” The interviewer gestures to her own eyes. 

Terezi tilts her head. “I’m blind, if that’s what you mean,” she says. “But that’s not a culling offense.”

“Blindness is most certainly grounds for culling, Lady Pyrope.” 

“Incapacitation is. Inability to meet one’s physical fitness requirements is. Blindness, itself, isn’t grounds for a cull unless it demonstrably incapacitates the troll in question.”

“And you don’t find that it does.”

“Obviously not,” Terezi says tartly, and the interviewer backs off. 

“All right,” she says, a bit less cheerful. “So would you describe yourself as a normal Alternian?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“Would you consider yourself particularly . . . extraordinary? In one aspect or another?”

“I can fly and shit gold,” Terezi snaps. “Ma’am, I just woke up from a coma. If you want me to answer a question, ask it.”

Now she’s definitely displeased with her, but Terezi can’t take it back, and they can always edit out the parts where she’s unpleasant, anyway. She wonders if Vriska flourished under the attention. 

The interviewer’s eyes glitter. She sits back in her chair, adopts a more casual posture, and lowers her tone to a conversational speed.

“Most members of the Movement have seen the security footage of you fighting the subjugglator squad,” she says. “It was impressive, especially for a troll without psionic or otherwise physically enhancing gifts. Can you describe what was going through your mind in that moment?”

“Not much. Not dying, mostly.” Terezi plucks at the cuff of her blouse. “I didn’t realize I was hurt until afterwards.”

“Really? Some kind of battle trance, would you say?”

“Not exactly.” She shrugs. “I’m used to fighting.”

“In your line of work, I suppose it would have been inevitable.”

Terezi bristles. “In most lines of work,” she counters, and the interviewer, perhaps as a white flag, doesn’t press the point.

“Tell us about the Bar. What was it like to be that high up in the order?”

Terezi draws a blank. “Bureaucratic,” she says, after a moment, which the interviewer rewards with a tinkling laugh.

“One can only imagine. Tell me: did you ever meet anyone of much importance?”

“Yeah. Yeah, a couple of people — I knew a lot of Senaterrors, local government officials, a few important judges. Troll Sonya Sotomayor. I met Magistragedy Kishar, actually.” She clears her throat. “A few times.”

“Did you know her personally?”

“We had a pretty personal conversation, once,” Terezi says evasively. “But that was around the time I turned traitor, though, so it was . . . understandably tense.”

Another laugh, encouragement for leading the conversation where it was supposed to go. “Speaking of,” the interviewer says, “let’s talk about that! When would you say you made the decision to become a hemoegalitarian?”

“Uh,” Terezi says, glancing at the cameratroll for some kind of prompt, “I don’t really know. It wasn’t a . . . a decision, so much as it was just . . . the ideal option?”

The interviewer’s lips thin, which suggests this is not a particularly inspiring answer. “Do you mean,” she says, in a tone that implies Terezi ought to agree with whatever she happens to suggest, “you always harbored those sentiments, but only lately did you find the impulse to act on them?”

“Yes,” Terezi lies. 

“Interesting.” The interviewer refers to her notes. The sheet of paper is blank. Its seems to be just for show. “Well, you certainly made up for lost time. How would you characterize your engagement with the Movement for the Second Alternian Empire?” 

“Successful,” Terezi says uncertainly. She doesn’t know what the interviewer wants to hear.

Apparently that’s close enough to it, because it gains another smile. “No one would disagree,” the interviewer assures her. “I was thinking of a more personal nature, though. Have you grown accustomed to working with lowbloods in such close proximity?”

Terezi _gets_ it, then, the angle, the purpose, the thesis of the entire production. They want a poster-troll for the reformed ideal Alternian citizen, or as close as it gets; someone who had a choice to stay with the Empire and rejected it, for no other apparent reason than idealism. Terezi’s motivations are, to the general public, inexplicable. The Movement can capitalize on the uncertainty to recruit midblood doubters, and demonstrate the plausibility of different hemocastes working together.

She phrases her answer with care. “I don’t see it as growing accustomed, necessarily,” she says. “Working with lowbloods is no different from working with midbloods or highbloods. There have been moments of tension, certainly, but the overall level of competency and dignity have been the same.”

The interviewer’s smile is radiant. “And what would you say,” she continues, “to any sympathizers of yours who may not have the _courage_ that you did to so openly defy the Empire?”

“It’s not a matter of courage,” she says, thinking quickly. “It’s a matter of fear.” 

The interviewer looks dangerously close to interrupting, so Terezi blazes on. “I was more afraid that the Church was going to kill me and my quadrantmate than I was afraid that they’d catch us if we rebelled,” she says. “At least we had a chance, with rebelling. There’s no chance of survival, with the Empire. You don’t have to be brave. You just have to be smart about what you fear.”

The interviewer tilts her head, waiting a moment, and then nods, swipes a hand across her throat, and the cameras lower. “Great,” she says. “Thanks. That’ll do.”

Terezi gets up and asks, “Can I go now?”

“Sure. We’ll run the promo on the compound network, you can see it there when it’s done.” The interviewer pauses. “Smell it. Whatever.”

She starts barking at the people behind the camera, hopping off the chair. Terezi is left to find her own way out.

 

* * *

 

She’s allowed to return to her own quarters after that. The recruiting mission returns early that morning, and Terezi waits for Vriska to return for hours. Aradia says that she’s probably been kept busy with a mission debrief, but Terezi finds it hard to believe. Vriska isn’t ever really busy unless she wants to be, which suggests that she’s staying away on purpose.

It makes her furious.

Vriska’s clothing is strewn out over the couch in the common area, and her things are arranged around the coffee table. A long blanket is strewn over the sofa, and all the throw pillows are bunched at one end. This gives her pause. When she ducks her head into the respiteblock, everything is almost exactly as she left it — the stack of uniforms in the closet untouched, her toiletries where she left them, the pile retaining the indent of her head where she last laid down on it. Even the slime is ice-cold from disuse.

Aradia lingers in the nutritionblock, making a cup of hot leaf beverage. “She should be back soon,” she says. “Vantas wouldn’t keep her that long.”

“I know he wouldn’t,” Terezi says, and finds that bitterness really does not suit her voice at all. She curls into her armchair and pulls up a piece of Imperial statute concerning the regulation of trade routes in the Laetit system, nurses a cup of bitter bean fluid, and waits.

She waits for hours.

Aradia putters around the nutritionblock for a while longer, and then slumps on the couch and turns on the television. Occasionally, she’ll make some wry remark about the current program, or poke fun at the news anchor’s mannerisms, and Terezi will infrequently reward it with a laugh. They go on like this until the sun pours in directly under the blinds and the clock chimes twelve times, and Aradia makes the third pot of bitter bean fluid in a day. They lounge around in nothing but old uniforms in some terrible state of disarray and watch bad television and eat the worst food that the nutritionblock offers, and the absence of Vriska hangs over the room like a shroud, but Aradia cuts through it with a combination wit and determination, and it occurs to Terezi that Aradia is _kind._

The network options on the base are suboptimal at best. Sollux, in his infinite wisdom and paranoia, limits them to the news, a few low-profile entertainment programs, and the intra-resistance channel for updates and summons. Aradia settles on the latter, which runs a near-constant stream of updates on the latest missions. It’s silent for the most part, now. 

Terezi leaves her perch in the armchair to use the ablution trap, and she’s in the process of brushing her fangs when Aradia calls her back into the block. 

“Hey,” she says. “You’re on TV.”

Terezi pokes her head through the doorway and takes a speculative sniff at the screen. The interviewer sits in the center of the shot, looking far more put together than she had in person, her expression folded in polite intrigue. Terezi’s own voice issues from the screen, far more rough than it had sounded in the moment, accompanied by shots of the interviewer nodding thoughtfully and smiling.

“. . . not dying, mostly,” Terezi’s voice says. The shot cuts back to Terezi, glassy eyes boring into the camera. “I didn’t realize I was hurt until afterwards.”

“Really? Some kind of battle trance, would you say?”

“Not exactly. I’m used to fighting.”

Aradia turns up the volume. “You look bored.”

“I _was.”_

“I’m surprised they’re not asking you about Vriska’s heritage. That’s probably what a lot of people are wondering about.” 

“Touchy subject,” Terezi offers, and returns to the ablutionblock. When she emerges, the shot has changed: it’s the security camera footage of Terezi on the rooftop, squaring off against the subjugglators. It doesn’t look like anything remarkable to Terezi. 

“At least we had a chance, with rebelling.” Terezi’s voice overlays the visual. The effect helps to inject some emotion into Terezi’s admittedly flat delivery, and a swell of sentimental music underfoot gives it an additional boost. “There’s no chance of survival, with the Empire.”

Terezi anticipates her next lines, which she had chosen particularly for their worth as a soundbite, and is knocked for a loop when they don’t come. Instead, the interviewer’s voice issues again from the speakers, inquisitive, probing: “Would you state your name for the camera?”

The shot changes again, and it’s Vriska, wearing her normal overcoat, hair let loose. She looks more herself than she did in the Movement uniform or the guard’s jacket. Clearing her throat, she says, “Vriska Serket.”

“Could you describe your affiliation with the Movement?”

“Archagent to Feferi Peixes of the Second Alternian Empire. All-around asset.” 

“And your assigned job in the Empire?”

“Fuck. That goes way back.” Vriska rocks back in the chair and her eyes roll up as she considers. “Uh, I was originally nabbed up by R&D. Aptitude assessment came back with ‘scienstiff,’ but that was just because I got into combustibles when I was a kid — experimented with doomsday devices, the like — and I knew enough about how to make shit explode that I aced that part of the test. Didn’t really like it, though. Boring as shit. You had to make whatever they asked you to, you could never just fuck around with energy coils and hyperdrive parts. Course, what I was really good at was ships, I could’ve been aces if they’d made me part of the pilot corps in the Fleet, but they’re dumbasses and they don’t let initiates anywhere near a starship engine unless they’re part of the space travel engineering corps.”

The interviewer pounces in one of the rare intervals where Vriska pauses to take a breath. “But you ended up a gamblignant,” she entreats. “Tell us about that.”

“Well, yeah, I was getting to that,” Vriska says irritably. “See, by the time I figure out that what I really want to do is fly, the Fourth Peregrenic War started up, and they were conscripting trolls out of other services to fill infantry ranks. I got tossed into the special ops. That’s about the time I get sick of being trotted out to do the Empire’s dirty work. So that’s the last job I really had, I guess.”

“That’s what she was doing,” Aradia says. “They must have caught her after she came in from the mission.”

Terezi shushes her. 

“How did you join the Movement?”

Vriska hisses a breath through her teeth. “How much time do you have?”

“Perhaps an abbreviated version would suffice.”

“I got arrested, fell in the pale with a lawyer, and broke out of jail. Joining a cult seemed to be a logical next step.” 

The interviewer hums. There’s a beat to let the comedic moment fall, and then she prompts with the next question. “Are you referring to Lady Pyrope?”

“Yeah.”

Again, the shot of Terezi on the roof, now with only a few subjugglators remaining. Terezi buries her nose in her bean fluid. This close to the end of the fight, her form grows sloppy, and she regrets allowing them to use it. Her skill is better suited to duels than brawling. 

Abruptly, the interviewer says, “What would you say to any sympathizers of ours who may have been in the position you were, once?” 

Vriska contemplates this. Aradia says, “You can tell they cut something out, there. Her tone is different.”

“What would they have cut?”

Aradia shrugs. “Something about you, maybe,” she offers. Terezi snuffs out her instinctive spark of curiosity. 

“Don’t be a fucking coward,” says Vriska, staring at the camera. “Following orders is for chumps.” 

Terezi guffaws. “I can’t believe they kept that in,” she says. “That’s incredible. They think it’s some kind of rousing anti-Imperial message — she’s got problems with authority, that’s not —”

Aradia, too, is snickering. “It’s likely all they could get out of her,” she says. “Vriska’s good at posturing, but she won’t last long in a situation like this.”

“What will you do, once the rebellion is over?” 

Vriska startles. Terezi does, too. They hadn’t asked her that question, and it niggles at her, an uncomfortable uncertainty that Vriska’s answer does nothing to assuage.

“I dunno,” she says. “Take my ship for a spin around the galaxy. See some cool shit. Do some cool shit. Get filthy rich. Play it by auricular.” 

The interviewer smiles.

Her next words are interrupted by the door to the block sliding open, and Vriska stumbles through. She’s trussed up like she was in the interview, overcoat all gleaming, hair combed back in a state she’d never keep it of her own free will. Still, with the flapping wings of her coat billowing out under her momentum and the sharp heel of her boots clicking on the floor, her silhouette’s more familiar to Terezi than it’s been in weeks, and nostalgia clamps its jaws down hard on her thinkpan.

Vriska freezes when she sees Terezi curled up in the armchair. The interview prattles on, and Aradia has the good sense to mute it, clambering for the remote among empty mugs of bitter bean fluid and hot leaf beverage. 

“Hi,” Terezi says, after it becomes apparent that she’ll have to initiate the proceedings. 

“Hello,” Vriska says. She lingers in the doorway, as if she’s trespassing on someone else’s hive, and Terezi resents the hesitation just as much as she would’ve hated the presumption of coming in without pause.

“Hey,” Aradia chimes in, after a beat, deliberately insouciant. “What’s up?”

Terezi turns her head to fix Aradia in her stare. She attempts to communicate telepathically the immense debt of gratitude she would owe should the pilot make herself scarce.

Whether Aradia receives the missive is debatable, but as she is nothing if not tactful, she sighs and puts down her mug. “I’m _going,”_ she says. “You can stop looking at me like that, Handmaid above.” 

Neither of them say anything to acknowledge it. Aradia rolls her eyes for their benefit and retreats into her block, taking with her a considerable number of pillows. 

Terezi unwinds her legs and sets her feet on the floor. The hardwood stings with cold, and she pushes herself to her feet, cautious of the places where her stitches strain and her muscles still ache. She reaches for her cane to prop herself up. Vriska’s eyes follow the movement with something hollow behind them. 

“I figured they’d left you for dead,” Vriska says. Flat. Quiet, and still just standing there in the goddamn doorway, like she doesn’t know whether the space is hers to transgress.

“I didn’t.”

“Yeah, well. When Kanaya leapt out of the damn speedlift, I figured you at least had a chance.” Vriska sheds her overcoat. “I kept asking Aradia if your ghost appeared, you know.” 

It stills Terezi. “Why?”

“Because if and when you die before me,” Vriska says, low, “I will be your fucking unfinished business. I will raise hell. You won’t have a fucking choice. You will not have a goddamn ounce of peace while I’m alive, once you die, especially not if you die in such a _dumbass_ way as kidnapping a _fucking_ senaterror.” 

There it is. The anger catches and drags at Terezi, threatening to infect her, but she keeps it at bay. “It was my choice,” she says.

“You’re not the only one affected by your fucking choices!”

“Can you hear yourself? Can you even hear yourself? The kind of hypocrisy it must take for you — you! — to make that statement is _stunning_ , it absolutely fucking _stuns —”_

“I’m your _moirail!”_

“Really!” Terezi laughs. It’s a cruel sound. “Is that what we’ve settled on, this week?”

Vriska exhales in a short, harsh sigh. 

“I tried,” she says, wretched, “to be a good moirail. I did! Maybe I’m fucking shit at it. But I fucking _tried,_ I tried my ass off, and I’m sorry if that’s not good enough, but it’s not my fault! It’s not my fault —”

“I know!” Terezi buries her hands in her hair, gets a grip on her horns to ground herself. “I know all of this! I am very aware that all of this is my fault, thank you!”

“That’s not what I was trying to say! You twisted that, you know you did —”

“Irrelevant. It’s right.” Her bloodpusher sends adrenaline skittering down Terezi’s veins and it makes her vibrate with the urge to do something, probably something stupid, she doesn’t know what. “I am a bad moirail! We are both bad moirails. This was all a bad idea. The last perigees of my life have been a sequence of terrible ideas.”

“Well,” says Vriska, all of a sudden standoffish, “it wasn’t all terrible.” 

“No,” Terezi says faintly, “no, it was. It was objectively bad. Impulse control was a fine thing. I miss having it.” 

“What are you _talking_ about?”

Vriska sounds offended by the sheer opacity of Terezi’s musings. Terezi takes it upon herself to enlighten her.

“Moirails don’t kiss each other,” she points out.

“Sure they do.” Vriska folds her arms and leans against the door, surly. “It’s pale enough a gesture.” 

“It can be. It wasn’t, when I tried it.” Terezi laces her fingers over her cane. “Do you remember? Whatever it was, it wasn’t conciliatory.” 

“It was an emotional night.”

“And it was nowhere within the range of reasonable behavior.”

“I didn’t . . . hate it,” Vriska says. She stares at her boots.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Terezi grinds her teeth. “I did,” she says. “What I did not do was _understand_ you. What, exactly, is that supposed to mean? Where does that leave us, with regards to our moirallegiance?”

“In a fuck of a shit situation?”

“Stunning analysis.” She turns around and paces. This does not help her to ignore Vriska, whose scent fluctuates wildly and is nearly impossible to pin down. “Let’s review the facts.”

“Sure.” 

“Our moirallegiance is breaking down.” Vriska opens her mouth to object, and Terezi brandishes her cane at her. “No buts! It is dysfunctional! This is not how moirails behave. We have not had a proper feelings jam in almost two weeks. We have failed to consult each other on major life decisions. We have not communicated to any relevant extent and ours has not been a relationship characterized by wholehearted, platonic goodwill for a considerable amount of time. That description is not one of a healthy moirallegiance.”

“No,” Vriska says, “but —”

“Counterpoint,” Terezi says. “Neither of us have suggested that we stop being moirails.” 

“Yeah,” Vriska says, palpably relieved. “Look —”

“I have not been feeling pale for you,” Terezi says. It feels like a surrender. She lowers her cane so it rests on the floor and shifts from one foot to the other. “It was probably a misdirection on my part to suggest that I still do. But I do not know what else to call it. I have been feeling very — you know how I’ve been behaving.” 

“Shut up,” Vriska demands, and Terezi is so surprised that she does. “Just — oh my God, you’re so goddamn frustrating, this shouldn’t be this hard —”

“If you’re vacillating, too, then just say so, instead of swearing at me like some kind of —”

“I’m not _vacillating,”_ Vriska scoffs, and Terezi glares at her.

“So you’re pale.”

“No.”

“But you’re feeling something that isn’t typically pale.”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t consider that to be vacillating.”

“No!”

“Would you care to elaborate?”

“I don’t know! I just — give me a second, I can explain it —”

“Are you deliberately trying to be infuriating? Are you trying to make a goddamn point?”

“It’s not as easy as just _saying_ it,” Vriska sneers. “I can’t just rip out an emotional confession on the fly, Counselor, sorry that’s not convenient for your schedule of character development —”

“I hate you,” Terezi says, shockingly honest. Vriska takes her by the shoulders and kisses her. 

Pale-black vacillation has been known to happen. A chaste kiss lingering half a second too long, or a glance staying a moment beyond its welcome, and all of a sudden a perfectly serviceable conciliatory relationship is tumbling ass over cranial plate towards disaster. Vacillation can be remedied, but by the time that most trolls are willing to admit that what they’ve got is a clusterfuck of emotions that’ve got no business being mixed up in squares that aren’t their own, it’s too late to extricate the conciliatory bond from the trappings of mating fondness. 

Vriska seems to be having the same thought. “This isn’t pale,” she whispers. Her breath washes Terezi’s lips. And she’s right and she’s wrong, and it’s not clear what she’s referring to when she says this, but all Terezi says is —

“No shit,” and pulls her in again. 

Her kiss tears ragged the mound of Vriska’s lip, and her claws paint blue welts over Vriska’s neck, and a well of frustration boils in her abdomen as desire wars with anger. She can’t figure out whether she wants to give pain or wring pleasure from Vriska’s body, and so she does both, shoving her back on the concupiscent platform and pinning her down with an arm across her neck.

Vriska still doesn’t seem entirely in sync with the mood; when Terezi pushes, she goes, all willing and pliable, and takes Terezi’s bloody attempts at making out with all the gentle press of a wriggler’s first flushcrush. One hand holds Terezi’s hip and the other braces Terezi’s wrist, so the splint isn’t displaced, and the tenderness makes Terezi burn furious. She tears her mouth away and affixes it to the pulse point under her jaw, gnawing at it until it turns indigo with bruising, and still Vriska doesn’t do anything, only winds her hand into Terezi’s hair and lets out a reedy noise.

“Fucking,” Terezi spits, “do something,” and she shoves herself away, panting, hair mussed. 

Vriska blinks up at her, looking thoroughly ravished. “What,” she says, voice wavering, “do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know! Something!” Terezi rakes a hand through her hair, pushing sweaty hanks out of her face. “Bite! Hit back! ”

“I don’t think,” she hedges, “I want to hit back right now.” 

“What?”

“I mean,” she says, “I want to — whatever you’re doing. I want to. And if you want to keep doing what you’re doing, I’m okay with that. I can dig it. But I don’t want to do it to you. So if that’s what you want, we’re going to have a problem.” 

“What do you mean, ‘whatever I’m doing’?”

Vriska flushes. Terezi’s mind is moving sluggishly, made lethargic by endorphins and adrenaline, but even so it takes her only half a second to piece it together.

“You cannot,” Terezi says, dumbly, “be feeling red for me like _this_.” She gestures to herself. There’s a bit of blue gathering under her fingernails and she feels a twinge of regret, which then triggers a twinge of frustration.

Vriska gives her a kind of _well-what-can-you-do_ smile, entirely too cavalier for the situation at present. Terezi is sent reeling by a fresh wave of loathing. 

“I punched you!”

“S’ not the worst thing that’s ever been done to me near a pail.”

“I called you a degenerate!”

“Not really your best,” Vriska points out, which, honestly, true.

“I left you,” Terezi says, which is also true, but she says it weakly, and her own anger is flickering. Of all the times for Vriska to decide to be _reasonable._

“You saved everyone.” Vriska shrugs. “Fair bargain, the way I see it.”

“You should be furious with me.”

“Oh, I was. I cussed you out in ways that made the pilot blush. I was ready to kill you for pulling that kind of stunt.” 

Terezi regards her warily. “And?”

“Kanaya showed up toting your body on a hoverpad,” Vriska says, “and anyone with working eyes would’ve said you were dead. You probably _were,_ for a hot second there, until the medicullers got their claws into you.” 

“And you just forgave me?”

“I think the Handmaid gave you the luck you deserved, and then some. Being mad at you and also being terrified you were gonna backflip off this mortal coil was too confusing, so I settled on just being worried.”

Terezi exhales and sits back on her haunches. Her stitches burn. 

“So you’re not nursing spades at the moment, I take it,” she says, attempting to strike a neutral tone.

“No.” 

“Not even a little bit?” She sounds disappointed and meagerly hopeful and hates it.

“Sorry.” 

“Right,” she says, dragging a hand over her eyes. She’s still in the hospital’s new uniform, freshly starched and too stiff around her collar, but there’s no way to take it off now without being suggestive. 

“Well,” she says, “this is no good. I can’t pail you black if you’re trying to pail me red.” 

“No,” Vriska agrees, embarrassed and a little amused.

“No. It’s just a non-starter.” She casts around for something to say. “I could try punching you again,” is what she comes up with.

“I mean, we could try it.” 

“It’s never going to work if you have that attitude about it.”

“It might make you feel better.”

“Objection,” Terezi says irritably. “Defendant is trying to bring pale conduct onto the concupiscent platform. Such behavior is patently perverse.”

“Oh, you wanna talk about perverse? Miss Pale-Black Vacillation? Trying to do it on the pile?”

“I didn’t hear you complaining a minute ago!”

“You were a lot more pleasant to deal with a minute ago!”

“ _Fine_ then!”

Terezi kisses her again before she can think better of it. Vriska rocks backward with the impact, and then pushes forward with equal force, measure and countermeasure, call and response. They keep pushing at each other like they’re tussling wigglers, except they’re also kissing, and Terezi’s trying to get a grip on Vriska’s horns so she can wrench her head back to get at her neck, and Vriska has her hands on her shoulders with some kind of gentle nonsense, and it’s by far the oddest concupiscent encounter Terezi’s ever had.

She breaks away and says, “Non-starter,” and Vriska nods, looking down.

“We could try,” she suggests.

“Can’t you just be _aggravated_ with me?”

“I’m more than capable,” Vriska snips, “but I can’t turn it on like a switch.” 

“That’s what he said,” Terezi mutters, and Vriska barks a short, surprised laugh. The corner of Terezi’s mouth twitches up and she watches Vriska try to clamp down on the sound. 

“You _are_ aggravating,” Vriska agrees, completely without malice, and Terezi sighs.

“I have to do everything my damn self,” she complains. “Come here.” 

She does. Terezi leans forward and kisses her gently, hardly more than a greeting, keeping her hands in her lap, and Vriska does the same. She kisses her until the anger drains out and she’s just tired, and when Vriska reaches up she lets her thread her fingers through Terezi’s hair. She can feel the long digits twisting around the strands close to her scalp, edging carefully around her horns, and the adrenaline fades. She mourns its loss. The pain comes back, but so do endorphins, and it feels better, less bright, less fierce. Now it’s easier. Not flushed, but easier. Not black, either. Just a nebulous, colorless feeling drifting in knots around her bloodpusher.

Vriska’s thumbnail digs into the base of the horn, biting the flush-red root where it meets the scalp, and a sound low and wanting slips from Terezi’s throat. When Vriska touched her horns in the pile, it had evoked a numbing pressure, a weight trailing down her spinal chord. Now, it electrifies her nerves, sends snaking fingers of heat into her abdomen. 

_Red,_ she thinks, and then, _Doable._

Vriska’s teeth scrape along Terezi’s neck, a light, grounding reminder, an echo of what Terezi had done before. Terezi shudders and then pushes Vriska off. She’s greeted by a mild noise of disappointment, until she starts wrestling with the hem of her own shirt, with which Vriska helps.

“If I didn’t have stitches,” she says, after the ordeal of removing her clothing takes entirely longer than it should, “this all would seem much more romantic.” 

“It’s fine.”

“Easy for _you_ to say. You’re not the one trying to fill a pail without putting weight on any of your goddamn limbs —”

Vriska laughs and leans back on her elbows, watching Terezi wriggle out of her pants. “Need help?”

“No. Fuck you.” Terezi kicks away the last of her clothing and flops over onto the pile. “You come over here. I’m exhausted.”

“If taking off your pants was all it took to tire you out, maybe I shouldn’t —”

“So help me Handmaid, Serket, if you walk away right now—” 

Vriska snickers softly and crawls onto the pile, bracing herself over Terezi. “Calm down. You’re so demanding.” 

She twines a length of Terezi’s hair around her fingertip, cradles Terezi’s head in her palm. Her hand is big enough to span the width of Terezi’s skull. 

“Someday,” Terezi says, plaintively, staring at the ceiling, “hopefully, I will fill a pail. Will that happen today? Who knows? Certainly not Vriska Serket, given that she seems more interested in the existence of _hair_ —”

“If you would shut up, maybe I could take a swing at it, but I can’t pail you and argue with you at the same time, so pick one!”

She digs her elbows back and rolls them both over. It winds her, and she tries not to show it. Vriska’s not warm but she’s just a few degrees off Terezi’s temperature, a delightful contrast, and she smells like salt, just strong enough to bleed through the remainder of hospital antiseptic and bleach.

“It’s a shame,” she breathes into Vriska’s ear. “Some of us can multitask.”

The way she grasps Terezi is downright proprietary, but Terezi doesn’t mind.

“You haven’t even taken your goddamn pants off,” she complains, and Vriska grins.

“I’m good that way.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“You like it.” 

“Not proudly,” Terezi says, and, well, that hardly does anything to chastise her, now, does it. 

Vriska lowers her teeth to Terezi’s neck. She stops just before making contact, and Terezi’s about to scream.

“I don’t,” Vriska begins, sounding uncertain. “I’m not —”

“Red,” Terezi insists. “Right? Red.”

“I _know._ I just —”

Terezi hisses and props herself up on her elbow, putting some distance between them. “What.” 

“Are we matesprits, now?”

“No,” Terezi says. “Yes. I guess?”

“What kind of answer is that?”

“I don’t know.” Terezi shrinks away. “I — I don’t want to be your moirail.” 

Vriska deflates.

“I don’t _know_ what I want. I want —”

Every quadrant; the black and the pale and the red, even ash, anything. Terezi peers into her thinkpan and finds a dizzying gap of emotion staring back at her, horribly unorganized, unrefined, untempered, that seethes and roils and wants all for itself like a greedy wriggler. How she wants Vriska transgresses the natural order. It’s a beast of a thing to feel.

Vriska watches her like she’s something dangerous. Terezi opens her mouth and summons words to explain herself, but finds none. In her ongoing silence, Vriska wilts, as if preparing for some brutal rejection, and that’s unacceptable. Terezi steels herself and sits upright. “Read my mind,” she orders. 

“What?”

“You can, can’t you?” She deliberately does not contemplate what the experience will entail. She does not want to lose her nerve. 

Vriska recoils. “Yeah — I haven’t tried since — fuck, since a long time ago, I guess. Maybe if you let me.” 

“Then do it.” Terezi spreads her hands. Her bloodpusher rockets along at breakneck speed, but she deliberately sets that out of her mind. “I can’t tell you,” she says tiredly. “There aren’t words. And I’m tired of lying. So just — look.” 

There’s a beat where she thinks Vriska is going to refuse her. 

“Are you sure?”

“No,” she says, briskly, “so do it quickly, before I decide otherwise.” 

“Okay,” Vriska says, uneasy, and sits upright. She takes a steadying breath. Her hand settles at her temple and her eyes flicker closed, and Terezi, for the first time in perigees, feels a skitter like nails drawing over her cranium.

She represses an instinctive shudder and forces herself to be placid. The touch at first only probes, feeling out the corners of Terezi’s consciousness in a way that feels all at once polite and horribly invasive. The presence of Vriska on the outskirts of her mind creates an odd echo effect in her thoughts, like there’s someone whispering just out of earshot, and it takes her a moment to realize that it’s Vriska’s mind, mingling at the edges with hers. She refrains from acting on the urge to tear away from the contact. 

The sensation of Vriska moving further in feels like stitch being knitted through unbroken skin. She bites her tongue and keeps quiet to avoid voicing her discomfort, but it swims to the forefront of her thinkpan anyway, a bright smear of unpleasant feeling. Vriska takes notice and retreats, waiting for Terezi to breathe evenly again, before attempting another advance, this one with deliberate gentility. It still evokes the sensation of being intruded upon, but if she focuses, she can make herself relax and allow the invasion.

Terezi can feel Vriska’s attention like a spotlight beam heating whichever memory or sentiment happens to brush over the first layer of consciousness. A sensation of curiosity prods at the back of Terezi’s thinkpan, not precise words, but an emotion, paired with a memory of Terezi, through Vriska’s eyes, saying, _So just — look._

Shock knocks Terezi for a loop. Vriska’s memories are rendered in stunning visual color, the likes of which have more or less faded from Terezi’s recollection, and the combination of that and a near-incapability to smell any detail from the idea renders it totally foreign. Sometimes she forgets that the way Vriska experiences the world is so odd, so incomprehensible; she rears back from the recollection, and Vriska whisks it away, worry radiating from her mind in suffocating waves.

Terezi, careful, edges closer to Vriska’s consciousness. She doesn’t know how to navigate the mindscape, exactly, and given that Vriska controls most of it, she doesn’t think her influence matters all that much. All the same, she does her best to keep her fingers to herself, in a metaphorical sense — she doesn’t poke at Vriska’s memories, or the flashes of thoughts that sneak over Vriska’s consciousness, brief and disorienting, like watching an underwater light show from the shore. 

She takes a deep breath and brings the nameless feeling to the forefront of her mind, focusing on it, offering it for perusal. It feels like stripping bare before a firing squad. It feels _worse_ than that. The ugly parts of it pulse and cling to the greater bulk of it, obvious and hideous, and all of a sudden she decides this was a terrible idea.

Vriska doesn’t say anything, exactly, insofar as she replies, but another thought steals across the surface of her consciousness — 

And then Terezi’s wrenched into a memory that is most certainly not her own, not from the shocking abundance of _colorlightglareimages_ that smear themselves across the surface of her brain, and her smell is muted, whittled down to metal and glass. She’s standing on an airlift in motion, clinging to the side, and outside it the Alternian sea churns and toils from the writhing of something enormous underneath it; and when she peers over the edge, she sees _herself,_ plummeting in free-fall, limp like a doll being flung from a great height. 

Panic sears a line of fire down her spine. It’s not Terezi’s panic, a subduable thing, but a horrific and all-consuming blight on rational thought. It’s the kind of panic which takes no quarter and demands action, and then she’s reaching out, seizing the mind of the soldier nearest the deck, without thought and without decision, without half a consideration of _should_ or _ought._ It’s by this that she knows it not to be her own decision. 

Terezi closes her eyes and shoves it away before she can watch the rest. She knows what happens.

All the same, the panic lingers. Underneath it lies a ridge of something else, like an edge of rust clinging to the underside of a ship, and Terezi clings to it, inspecting it. It radiates a familiar greed, an aching hunger. 

Terezi takes a real breath, opening herself to scents from the real world, and finds that Vriska has curled in on herself. Her hands cradle her own temples like she’s trying to protect herself from a fall of her own. Terezi reaches out and catches one of her wrists before the idea really registers. 

The connection isn’t broken. She can see the rapid-fire chain of reactions that fly across Vriska’s thinkpan, and she can see them settle on guarded contentment. Everything about Vriska is guarded. There is not a single part of her mind that is not locked behind layers and layers of barbed wire and brick, her barriers a cage and shield at once.

She can’t parse out what any of it means. There’s too much stimulation at once, too much fear exchanged from both sides. Terezi pulls Vriska’s hand away from her head, and the connection fades to a murmur at the back of her mind. It’s still there. But she can ignore it, now, a curtain of white noise instead of symphonic bombast. 

“Hi,” she says. There isn’t anything else _to_ say. The raw quantity of data that’s been dropped in her lap defies immediate comprehension, and she needs time to process, preferably time alone, where she can parse out what was hers and what was Vriska’s, and what any of it _meant —_

The opening notes of the Imperial anthem blare. The television blazes to life. Terezi rips Vriska out of her mind and leaps away, putting several feet of physical distance between them. Her breath comes in tiny, ragged gasps. Her mind whirls in its sudden solitude, and something like _cold_ steals across it, unused to the sudden echo chamber of private thoughts.

The Imperial crest paints itself onto the blank screen, and Terezi hauls the blanket from the sofa around her shoulders. Across the room, Vriska is wrestling on her jacket, finger-combing her hair into something resembling dignity. Terezi shuffles the blanket around to cover her legs and tries to approximate casual repose.

The screen flickers, and then the Empress’ face appears. She looks like the kind of creature a macabre artist would sculpt from black marble; the angles of her face settle at odds to each other, subtly out of proportion: cheeks stretched and caving in on themselves from their own breadth, eyes stretched in long vertical slits, a yellowing glow radiating from behind the tyrian irises, barbed piercings dripping from her ears. When she breaths, it sends a flutter through her ear fins and rattles through her gills. 

“Attention, grubs,” she says. Her voice rings hollow and vibrates at a level far beneath the normal range of sound for a troll. It’s layered beneath a seadweller accent, a deepwater accent, the likes of which Terezi has heard traces in Feferi’s lilt. “Ya Empress got somefin to say.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _But I keep you on your best behavior_  
>  _Honey, I can’t be your savior_  
>  _Love you to the grave and farther_  
>  _Honey, I am not your martyr_  
>  —Troll St. Vincent, _Savior_


	18. Prelude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“The Age of Conquest was an era bracketed by the sweeps 500 and 7000 A.C. (After Condescension), roughly speaking. It describes the period between trollkind’s first attempt at spacetravel and the conquest of the last free planet in the galaxy — Fethyria, a relatively small gas giant in the Nepthys system, populated by a race of sentient jellyfish. Although by and large incapable of both fine motor control and conceptualizing organized government, the Fethyrians were killed en masse to ensure that they never evolved into anything which might threaten the Alternian Empire; with their defeat, the Empress claimed the entire galaxy for her own. This would be the last expansion of territory until the advent of travel between universes, after which the Conquest of Earth would begin, sometime around 8000 A.C.”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

Terezi’s blood boils and then freezes. Vriska, still as ice on the other side of the room, seems to be in the same condition.

“It’s come to ya gull’s attention,” the Empress leers, “that some of y’all aren’t properch-ly appreciatin’ all I do for ya shits. It’s downright disrespectful, what y’all are doin’. Fightin’. Heresy-in’. Treason-in’.” She purses her lips. “And then y’all get the gull to advertise it? On _my_ telefishun? I mean, where is the coddamn shame?” 

She shakes her head, like a disapproving lusus. “Ain’t like y’all to forget,” she says, “what happens to treasonous sumbitches when I get my prongs on ‘em. And I can only assume you musta forgotten, because otherwise, no troll in their right pan would do what y’all have been up to!” She cackles. “It ain’t reasonable! It ain’t _good,_ guppies, and it ain’t natural. Gettin’ your reef-olution on. Babes, don’t you know the meaning of _Empress?_ It means that anytime I did feel like it, I coulda blown you outta the coddamn sky!”

After a deliberate, dramatic pause, she drops to a more moderate volume. “But I don’t,” she says. “Why don’t I? Because that would be downright wasteful. It’s just that nowadays, I don’t got a choice. You’re forcin’ my prongs, minnows! It wouldn’t have to be this way, except that cuz of you, it kinda does.”

Her trident swings into frame, heavy gold twirled like a toothpick in her hand. She examines the razor-thin points with feigned disinterest. “Here’s what I could do,” she explains. “I could send my Fleet to scour ya off that piece of shit spawn-planet for all time. I could burn y’all to the ground _tonight_ and not lose a day’s sleep over it. I could. And I might. Fleet’s headed Alternia-ways at this very moment, matter of fact, and tomorrow night they’ll probably be sittin’ on top of haul of ya. Ya know? And whatever happens, come tomorrow night, there’ll be blood.” She beams. “I’m shoalin’ up personally, to make _sure_ of it.”

A shiver rips down Terezi’s spine. 

“Are y’all flattered? I’d be flattered. Ain’t most grubs that get a personal visit when they throw a tantrum. But y’all are special. Y’all got a little mutant shitblood sitting in the midst a you, don’t ya? Isn’t that the way? And another pink shitblood shovin’ aureii your direction to make sure ya don’t perish.” Her eyes slide to the camera, lazy and deliberate, and a smirk tugs at her lip. “Hiya, Fef. How’s Mom?”

Vriska’s tense as a taut wire. “She knows,” she says. “I don’t know how —”

“Sollux obviously isn’t as good as he thought he was.”

“But!” The Empress claps her hands together. “That ain’t shit worth carpin’ over. Now I’m thinkin’: thats a load a’ trolls they’ve bamboozled into followin’ em; that’s a whole bunch that could be faithful soldiers instead a’ gallows meat. And so I’m thinkin’: before I blow ‘em to the Handmaid’s handbasket, what if I take a swing at redemption?” She taps her chin in contemplation. “So I’m’ma work it merciful, ya know, like the generous bad bitch I am.” 

The Condesce leans back, her smile rich with satisfaction. “Gimme the Sufferer’s shrimp, and I’ll back off. Brig me the wriggler, and I’ll look the other wave on all ya heretical impropriety. I’ll look the other wave on your heinous treason. Pardons all around! That’s a _great_ d-eel, if you didn’t catch the drift. That’s one for — what, there can’t be more than a couple hundred of you fucks — but that’s still a shelluva profit.” She cocks her head, and shrugs. “Or not, and I’ll blow ya coddamn brains out, assuming I don’t give the school of ya to my clownfishes first. It’s all the same to me. Only reason I’m offerfin is because it’s a shame to see so much trollpower go to waste. Don’t read me wrong, though: I don’t give one shit or another whether I gotta cull the load of ya, and I will, if that’s the way you wanna sail.” 

She blinks, one filmy, transparent set of eyelids flickering. “Think fast, my good bitches,” she says. “One night. Then the lot of ya is chum.” 

She flashes a peace sign, and the feed cuts out. 

Vriska’s fingernails bite her palm. 

“She’s lying,” Terezi says, immediately, urgently. “She won’t let anyone go.”

“I know that,” Vriska says tightly. “The problem is whether everyone else does.” 

“You think anyone would turn Karkat in?”

“The only thing keeping a lot of people here is desperation. If they have a way out, they’ll take it.” Vriska climbs to her feet. “We have to find him.”

“Why?”

“Have you seen the fuck? He’s got the defensive capabilities of an infant featherbeast, he’s not gonna last a hot minute if people buy into her ‘working it peaceful’ shit.” Vriska’s already at the door, and Terezi lunges for the remainder of her clothes in an attempt to catch up. “It’ll be a miracle if he’s not dead on our arrival.”

“He should be fine,” Terezi says, snatching up her canesword, although she doesn’t believe it as much as she’d like to. “He should be —”

“He doesn’t have anywhere near the luck he’d need for me to believe that,” Vriska says grimly. Terezi, acknowledging the validity of this point, slings her jacket on and follows her out the door.

 

* * *

 

The shouting coming from Karkat’s office can be heard three hallways away. Terezi draws her sword on approach, as Vriska does her guns, and she approaches the door with all stealth possible. Karkat’s irate howling is clearly audible over the rest of the din, which offers a reassurance that he’s still alive, at least. The rest of it is too chaotic to pick out.

Vriska kicks in the door before she can use her Vision Eightfold to scout out the situation, a strategic decision that Terezi might have questioned had she been given notice of its approach, but she makes do and follows her in, anyway. 

The room is full of Karkat’s advisors, none of whom have drawn their specibi, and most of whom seem actually rather reluctant to be there. Kanaya stands at her usual place to the right of Karkat, and Aradia flanks him on the left. 

Feferi’s face, somber and lined, flickers on the teleconference screen. Sollux’s glowers beside her. 

“Jesus Chist,” Karkat says, rounding on Terezi. “About fucking time. Put your weapons down, you look like fucking buffoons.”

Terezi sheathes her sword. Vriska holsters her guns, kicking the door closed with her heel.

“We thought you would be getting your ass beat by now,” she says, blunt as ever.

“Sorry to disappoint you. Weirdly, it’s one of those rare, shining times in my life when I’m _not_ getting my ass beat, in a physical sense, which, of course, means it’s time for the hand of fate to get its licks in. Exhibit A!” Karkat brandishes a hand at the Heiress, spinning back to face her. “ _This_ piece of work!”

Feferi’s smile is gone. Terezi realizes that she has rarely, if ever, seen Feferi when she is not smiling. It makes her look more a highblood; it emphasizes the wide sockets of her eyes, the slim slits of her pupils, the long, narrow nose. 

“Who thought it would be a good idea,” Karkat snarls, “to play ‘don’t wake the bear’ with the fucking Empress!”

“That wasn’t what I was doing,” Feferi says, uncharacteristically straightforward. 

“No? _No?_ What else do you call that? It was showboatery! Blatant showboatery! And — I swear to God, if you make a fucking fish pun, I’ll hurl myself out that goddamn window —”

“I’m sorry,” Feferi says. She sounds genuinely contrite. “I am so very sorry.”

“Yeah, I’d expect that,” Karkat snarls, “seeing as it’s your fucking fault!”

Feferi blinks. It is entirely possible, Terezi realizes, that no one has ever spoken to her like this before.

“I beg your pardon — my fault?”

“Yes, yours!” He gestures out the window, vaguely indicating the Capitol. “It was your jolly idea to kidnap a Junior Senaterror! If we hadn’t taken the damn mission, the Condesce wouldn’t know we were right fucking _here!_ You wanted a ‘flashy’ success, you goddamn got it, now we’re about to get wiped off the face of the fucking planet. So thanks for that.”

“It could have been something else.”

“You know what? You’re right! It could have been the entirely unnecessary and ostentatious fucking _promo_ that _your_ PR team broadcasted on _Imperial television!_ Thanks for setting that up, by the way, _Solly,_ you really did recruitment a favor there.” 

“This,” Feferi says, “was not what I wanted to happen.”

“Well, I’d hope the fuck not! Funnily enough, that doesn’t make it any less your fault!”

“Cool it, KK,” Sollux says. He sounds tired.

“I will _not!_ I will _not_ fucking cool it! Not when I’m going to die tomorrow because your matesprit gets off on showing how much better she is than the Empress while only ever putting other people’s necks on the line!”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sollux snaps. Feferi puts a hand on his shoulder, silencing him. Her expression is somber.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. And I will do everything I can to help you.”

No fish puns; she has that much tone sensitivity, at least.

“Well, I don’t know how the fuck you’re going to do that,” Karkat sulks, “given that the Fleet’s going to be here, I don’t know, _tomorrow._ And you’re on the other side of the galaxy.” 

Feferi exchanges a look with Sollux. Karkat’s eyes dart between them suspiciously.

“What are you two chucklefucks staring at each other for?”

Vriska covers her mouth and arches her eyebrows at Terezi. That this kind of indolence goes uncorrected suggests, at least, that the subject of the Heiress’ consternation is a matter of long-term debate.

“Faster than light travel,” Sollux says, slowly, “is still in its infant stages —”

Feferi shrugs. “Infants can walk.” 

“No, that’s not — technically! Technically! Yes! But that is by no means —”

“Great,” she says. “Then get it working by tomorrow evening.”

“That’s not how it works! I can’t leap forward sweeps in travel technology before tomorrow evening —”

“Try harder,” she says simply, and then, turning to Karkat, “I’ll be there. With reinforcements.” Hesitating, she adds, “It’s time the Condesce and spoke to each other, I think.” 

“Fine,” he snaps. “And you expect us to do — what? Distract her until you can snag a ride on the _Condescension?”_

“Yes,” Feferi says. It stuns him silent.

“Your Majesty,” Kanaya says, quietly. “What you ask is —”

“Necessary,” Feferi says, stubbornness written in the set of her jaw. “I know it’s not fun, and it’s not convenient, and it’s not ideal. And I’m asking a lot. But I’m only asking what’s necessary.”

“I think we have some different fucking opinions on the definition of _necessary,”_ Karkat begins, but Kanaya cuts him off. 

“Do you believe you can win?”

Feferi nods fervently. “Yes,” she says. “I can. I know I can.”

Kanaya considers this. Karkat doesn’t interrupt her, this time, and only watches her from the corner of his eye with wariness.

“All right,” she says. “The Fleet will be here tomorrow. We can find a way to stall them before they reach the planet, and that will give you time to attack the Empress. You kill her, the Fleet won’t be a problem any more.”

“This is insanity,” Karkat objects. “This is actual, obvious, point-blank insanity.”

“Then insanity it is,” Kanaya fires back. “If insanity gives us a chance, then you may take the sane road yourself, and say hello to the Handmaid for me when you get where it takes you.”

Terezi blinks.

“I don’t know whether my opinion is all that warranted, here,” she says. Feferi and Karkat both turn to look at her. “But I agree with the Lieutenant, for what it’s worth.”

Feferi nods. “Good,” she says. “Then it’s settled.”

“It’s really fucking not,” Karkat says. “What happened to ‘General Vantas’?”

“Her Majesty, Feferi Peixes,” Feferi snaps, and it shuts him up, if with a little more force than strictly necessary. “I’ll promote Kanaya right over your head, if need be, Karcrab, don’t think I won’t. Being contrary about this won’t help either of us.”

Karkat reels, furious, and she blows past before he has a chance to retort. “Plan the defense,” she says. “I’ll be there. Ocray?” 

Then she smiles, with a childish, tenuous hope, as if maybe the pun will make things better, add some levity to a situation that neither asks for nor suits it. When it doesn’t, her smile fades, and with a brusque nod, she turns off the camera.

Karkat exhales. No one moves to speak.

“All right,” he says. “Here’s where we hash this out, all right? Right here and now, and if any of you have a problem with the verdict rendered here, you can take it and shove it up your nook with the rest of the complaints I’m sure you’ve fucking had, over the sweeps.”

Vriska eyes him in disgruntlement. Kanaya tenses at his side.

“If you think I should go,” he says, “and take the Empress’ deal, raise your prong.”

None do. He keeps his eyes on the woodwork of his table.

“No judgment,” he says. “No punishment. Who thinks I should do it? I won’t be pissed, honest.” He shrugs. “Hell, it’s not like I didn’t consider it.” 

His eyes dart between advisors in a way that suggests he’s not being entirely honest. His heartrate, incidentally, also suggests this. Terezi shifts in discomfort; she understands why he’s doing this. She also understands that it is an exquisitely tense situation, for which he may or may not be fully equipped to handle. 

There may be something to be said for forthrightness. However, it will invariably feel loathsome to a legislacerator. 

An advisor at the far end of the table, to Vriska’s immediate right, purses his lips. Then, tentatively, he inches up his hand.

Vriska puts her gun to the side of his head and cocks it. 

The advisor pales. He flinches, and she wedges the barrel against his ear. “What the _fuck!”_

A chorus of echoes erupt around the room, complimented by Kanaya’s fervent orders for her to stand down. She turns to give Terezi a glance; Terezi has not moved, and does not intend to.

“Call the shot,” Vriska says.

“Stand down,” Kanaya says. “We can resolve this without —”

“Wasn’t asking you.” 

Vriska’s gaze flits to Karkat, who has not said a word since the advisor raised his hand.

The General stands rooted to the spot. Color has drained from his cheeks, and he’s staring at Vriska as though she’d just backflipped spectacularly off the handle. But he still hasn’t spoken.

“Call the shot,” Vriska repeats.

Kanaya rounds on Terezi. “Counselor,” she says tightly. “Perhaps you could be put upon to act as a source of reason in diffusing the situation —”

Terezi lifts her hands. “The law declines to take a stance,” she says. 

“On death threats?”

“There was more than one of those in the past minute,” Terezi says, noncommittal. “Which would you like me to address first?”

Kanaya makes a noise of aggravation. Vriska rolls her shoulder but keeps the gun in place.

“Vantas,” she warns. “Make a decision, or I’m going to.”

Karkat’s mouth moves wordlessly. After a moment, he manages, hoarse, “Don’t.” 

The advisor sags with relief. Vriska shrugs, flicks the safety on, and holsters the gun without so much as blinking.

“Serket,” Kanaya seethes. “What in the name of the Handmaid —”

“That fuck over there wants to strike a plea deal with the Empress,” Vriska snorts. “I doubt he’d miss his pan if I blew it out, honestly.” 

“Terezi! You would —”

“I don’t know why you’re angry at me,” Terezi says, affronted. “Did I threaten the poor man?”

“Your moirail —”

“Is an autonomous being with her own agency, thanks very much. She’s not a trained barkbeast.”

“That situation,” Kanaya says, “was needlessly escalated —”

“To avoid further escalation.” Vriska makes a sweeping gesture to the general room. “Anyone else feeling like opening negotiations with the Condesce? Anyone else feeling particularly diplomatic tonight?”

No one is feeling particularly diplomatic tonight. 

“Then there you are,” she says to Kanaya. “The gamblignant special. You want a mutiny? Letting your crew believe there’s no penalty for thinking about mutiny is how you get one.”

“There isn’t a penalty for thinking about mutiny,” Karkat says. It’s tired. It’s the first thing he said since he made the call.

“Any of you believe that?” Vriska stares down the room. “No? Good. Because he’s wrong, and there is, and it’s _me._ I don’t work for him. I work for the fish girl, who, incidentally, ain’t _here_ right now, and won’t be undergoing a disciplinary conduct review for a long-ass time. Next time, I’m not putting it up to Vantas. If you wanted to jump ship, you should’ve done it yesterday.”

“Stand down,” Karkat says. He summons his sturdiest scowl, but there’s an insincere quality to his expression of disgust, as if a piece is missing. Something like respect peers through. 

Vriska curls her lip. “You might’ve missed the part where I pointed out that I don’t work for you,” she says, but she folds her arms and backs away from the table, leaning against the wall. 

Aradia laughs, shaky. “Well,” she says. “I suppose —”

The scream of a speedlift splits the air. Terezi drops to her knees as the sound sears its way into her brain, reverberating in auriculars trained to calculate distance to a sophisticated degree, and Karkat’s swearing is lost to the din. Vriska is at the window in a second, one gun drawn, the other hand used to pull back the curtain. 

“What the _fuck_ is going on,” Karkat roars. Vriska scans the sky, and her oculars widen. 

“Bombers,” she says. “Vantas, you need to —”

Light explodes outside the window in a wash of bleach. It sends everyone but Terezi stumbling, and even she is struck still; even if she weren’t, the earsplitting blast that rocks the building would have done the trick. 

The window shatters. 

“Get out,” Vriska shouts. “Out! Now!”

Vriska shoves the door open, shoulder-first, and sprints down the hallway to the stairwell at its end. The building writhes like fly paper in a tornado, and Terezi finds herself being tossed against one wall, then another, in her attempt to follow Vriska. Behind her, a continuous slew of cursing informs her that Karkat is attempting to do the same. 

Panels of the ceiling begin to crack and topple, turning the hallway into a long, uncertain gauntlet. Terezi almost gets pinned twice. Behind her, she can hear various shouts of surprise and pain when the detritus catches trolls, and she bobs and weaves around the disintegrating floor.

Crevasses in the ground open up and she can see down into the stories below, where hordes of trolls rush for the exit. The compound unfolds like a nested doll split open by a knife, and it occurs to Terezi how awfully, dizzyingly far they are off the ground.

Vriska flies through the entrance to the stairway and takes them two at a time. “Move,” she barks, and Terezi follows the order, sliding down the bannister to keep up with her instead of bothering with the steps. Aradia leaps the railing herself and falls down a story, landing with all expectable grace on the flight below and continuing her descent. Terezi’s limbs are straining and she’s fairly certain a chunk of concrete caught her somewhere — she can smell teal and she should never smell that much teal — but it doesn’t matter, can’t matter, for now, because the stairs below them are crumbling away as the building collapses under its own weight and if she’s going to survive she can’t be thinking about anything but surviving.

A chunk of the ceiling falls, and somewhere up ahead, Aradia shrieks. Vriska swerves around a cascade of falling rubble and seizes her by the arm, hauls her along, virtually carrying the smaller troll as she weaves through the perils of a collapsing building.

Terezi feels the shift before anyone else sees it. “To the side,” she cries. “To the side, to the left side —”

A rift opens in the stairwell, and Vriska skids to a halt as the chasm cuts a line right in front of her feet. The building cracks open with a monstrous shriek, and the window in the staircase shatters. Terezi flings up her hands to protect her face from the glass, and scents around for an escape; the rest of the stairs are falling away, and the building continues to tilt, tilt, tilt, drawing them back as the window rises, as if metamorphosing into a skylight —

“Window,” she chants. “Window, window, the window, Karkat, _out the window, now —”_

If he has arguments, she doesn’t admit them. She grabs him by the wrist and leaps the gap, catching the windowsill and cutting open her palm on the remains of the pane, but getting a hold. Wriggling, she scrambles over the edge as the building turns still farther, making it an almost uphill climb to get up and over the ledge and onto the side of the building, where she can now stand almost perfectly upright.

“Climb,” she calls, voice high with terror. “Climb — Vriska! _Vriska!_ Get out!”

A metal hand grips the window ledge, and Terezi could cry for relief. She seizes it and hauls Vriska over, who in turn reaches back for Aradia, and working quickly, they haul all five of them over onto the side of the building. The place still trembles, and Terezi takes off for dry ground, sprinting along the wall towards the flat, untouched plane of grass. It’s fifty yards away, only fifty — now forty, now thirty, and she can hear the place crumbling behind her, just as well as she can hear Vriska’s harsh breathing no more than a step behind her, and the pounding of her own bloodpusher. 

As the place finally collapses in on itself, she makes a desperate leap for safety. For a horrible moment, she’s suspended in midair, the shrapnel billowing out behind her in an enormous black cloud, the smell of it melding with the smell of its color in some horrible burning scent —

She clears it. Landing on the grass, she takes the fall poorly, toppling over on her knees and hitting the ground with her nose buried in the dirt and her legs twisted uncomfortably under her. But nothing’s broken, and her lacerations are few enough that she won’t be bleeding out anytime soon, and she wants to cry for her own good luck.

Vriska, kneeling next to her, staggers to her feet. She’s still breathing, which will have to be good enough for Terezi, for now. Karkat leans on Kanaya a few feet away, and Aradia, lying on her back in the grass, gulps lungfuls of air like she hasn’t tasted it for days.

“Terezi,” Vriska says, as if she hasn’t the breath for more.

“Fine. You?”

“Fine,” Vriska wheezes, and sits down hard in the dirt. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

“Fuck,” Karkat says, a sentiment which Terezi feels sums up the situation nicely. “Fuck.”

“Everyone alive?” Aradia twists into a sitting position, grunting in pain. “Anyone injured?”

“No.” Kanaya isn’t injured, but she’s winded. As Terezi watches, a cut along Kanaya’s jawline seals itself over, iridescent grey skin knitting itself together. She feels a pang of envy.

“What the hell,” Vriska says. “The invisibility field was working, wasn’t it?”

“The field serves as a disguise,” Kanaya says. “Not an active shield. We had one of the latter, too, but —”

“It wasn’t prepared to deal with an Imperial airstrike,” Karkat finishes. Scarlet blood weeps from a cut on his lip. He scrubs it off his chin gracelessly.

“That wasn’t an Imperial airstrike,” Kanaya counters, hunching over on her knees. It’s the first time Terezi’s ever witnessed her being winded, and it’s vaguely alarming. 

“Uh, pardon? Did you miss something?” Vriska gestures to the broken remains of the compound, little more than a pile of rubble and steel framework. Fire still licks at the more combustible parts. A small group of stragglers pools on the field, maybe a third of the population of the base in total, no more than a hundred soldiers at best. Terezi feels a dull ache set up shop in her sternum. More death. She’s getting very sick of death.

“And we’re breathing,” Kanaya snaps. “The invisibility field was functioning perfectly well, up until and including the duration of the strike; they were likely aiming for the Capitol, and only incidentally struck the surrounding area. If they meant to hit us, we wouldn’t be alive.” 

Another triad of lifts soar in from the east, snarling with deafening volume so low to the ground. The Capitol lights up in a deluge of fire and smoke, explosions rattling the ground even miles away. The planes pass over the city, and then turn, come around, and drop a second round, carving a crater into the already barren terrain. 

“ _That,”_ Kanaya says, pointing, “is an Imperial airstrike.”

“That’s her own fucking Capitol,” Vriska says, faintly. “That’s her own fucking — that’s _her_ city.”

“Populated by trolls that resisted subjugglator invasion,” Kanaya says. “A statement. To assure us of her willingness to execute her threats. It also suggests that she is, as of now, uninterested in maintaining popularity.”

The Capitol burns. 

Nobody says anything. Vriska watches the city crumble with genuine horror, and Terezi leans forward, twists two fingers around hers. It’s cheap comfort, but it’s the only kind they have time for. 

“Jesus.” Karkat scrubs his face. “Well, fuck. What —”

Kanaya is three steps ahead. “We could go to the secondary Korsian base,” she says. “Our contact would welcome us.”

“Even after the shit the Empress said? Unlikely.”

“The Handmaid herself could put out a warrant for your arrest,” Kanaya says flatly, “and you would still be welcome.”

“Fuck. Fine.” Karkat drags his hands down his face, heaves a breath. “We can’t march a whole fucking parade there, though. We’ll draw attention.”

“Uh, beg your pardon,” Vriska says, “quick question, sorry to intrude — what the fuck are you talking about?”

Kanaya and Karkat share a glance.

“The secondary Korsian headquarters is where another group of forces is located,” Kanaya explains. “It also houses the largest concentration of spaceships, and has hotlines to the bases on the other major continents. Its functionality paled only in comparison to our own headquarters.”

“Making it the ideal spot to plan a counterattack,” Karkat says, grudgingly. 

“What do you mean, spaceships?”

“The Movement has been accumulating resources for some time,” Aradia says. She’s nursing a black eye the color of dirty rust and she’s holding her arm in a ginger kind of way that can’t be good. “Of course, it won’t help in an all out firefight, but —”

“With strategic planning,” Kanaya finishes, “and ample luck, it’s possible that we could hold our own against the Fleet long enough for Feferi to engage the Empress. After that, it won’t matter one way or another.”

“And the other place — you can mount that kind of assault from there?”

“Yes.” Kanaya nods. “It has the largest hangar available to us, the largest concentration of weaponry. It’s where we took the _Scourge.”_

Vriska notably relaxes. The charred remains of the base hangar remind Terezi that it was possible to have lost much more than they did. 

“Fine,” she says. “As good a chance as any.”

“A better chance than most,” Kanaya corrects. “Ms. Megido, if not in need of immediate medical attention, will scavenge the remains of the hangar here; fly anything you can to the coordinates I send you. Use the survivors to pilot the vehicles. We’ll be faster on foot. Likely we’ll reach them before you can.” She indicates the milling mass of trolls. “I give you operating command as Vice Lieutenant. We will meet the contact at her HQ and alert her of the situation’s difficulties, after which she should send some aid your way.” 

Aradia registers brief surprise at the promotion, but she masks it admirably. “Yes’m.” 

Karkat seems perfectly content to lean back and let Kanaya deal with the situation. Terezi has enough of a sense of self preservation not to contradict Kanaya’s judgment in the aftermath of a crisis.

“Right,” Kanaya says, determined. “Onward, then.”

 

* * *

 

The second Korsian headquarters appears to be buried in the depths of the forest, much like the first Korsian headquarters. To get there requires a strenuous trek through the woodlands not unlike the one they underwent after they first landed on Alternia.

Three hours pass. As it turns out, long hikes through the forest do not become Vriska’s temper.

“I don’t know where we’re going,” she says, “or who we’re meeting, but they better be worth their weight in aureii to justify this.”

“As regards your first two uncertainties: if you ask Karkat, he’ll probably tell you.”

“I _did.”_

“And he said?”

“Including profanity?”

“Never mind.” Terezi raises her voice. “Not to bother you, General, but —”

“Good! Chase that instinct. Kanaya —”

“ _Vantas.”_

Karkat raises his face to the sky, the poster child for thinly-stretched patience. “How can I help you, Serket,” he says, without turning. 

“You gonna tell us where the fuck we’re going at some point?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

“It’s a justified one,” Terezi sighs. “General —”

“We’re going to a friend’s,” he says shortly, and keeps walking.

“Great,” Vriska chirps, without enthusiasm. “I, for one, feel comforted.”

“We’re close,” Karkat says. “You’ll find out soon enough, anyway.”

“That fails to reassure me as to their character.”

“Yeah, well, she’s — you’ll find out.”

Terezi lifts an eyebrow. “ _Very_ reassuring.” 

“No,” he says, wincing. “The caretaker — she’s fine, she’s a friend, she’s just.”

He takes so long debating his word choice that Terezi assumes he’s trailed off. “Odd?” 

“I guess? Insofar as that means anything, anymore. She’s kind of a handful. Let me do the talking.”

“Forgive me if that fails to offer comfort,” Terezi says.

“It’s cool. She likes me.”

“So she’s deranged,” Vriska snorts.

“Cheap shot,” he says, hardly bothering to acknowledge it. “You can do better, Serket. To answer your question, Pyrope, she and I — we go back.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ve known her about as long as I’ve known Sollux, or — hell, even Kanaya — point being, she’s fine. She’s no threat to us.” 

They approach a clearing in the trees. A wind blows through the branches, stirring up the leaves in a whispering chorus. Something rustles beyond the treeline, and Terezi barely gets a whiff of it when a green blur shoots out from among the trees and tackles Karkat to the ground.

_“Karkitty!”_

Terezi’s sword is out and Vriska’s got her guns trained on the unidentified troll before Karkat can yell “Stand down,” and the split second of alarm is bookended by bemused surprise. 

Kanaya, who has remained stoic throughout the experience, sighs. “Nepeta,” she says. “A moment of decorum, for our guests, if you have it in you.” 

The troll — Nepeta — springs back up. Now still, Terezi can take a good sniff of her, make out her shape: it’s a huge, muscular woman, with a bushel of hair sprouting from her head like a black dandelion and broad fangs hanging over her bottom lip. Her horns sit in the same spots as Terezi’s, but they’re shorter, and wider; a long green trenchcoat drags behind her in the grass

“Hi,” she chirps. Her voice is high and reedy, utterly at odds with the kind of person her appearance would suggest her to be. The woman could be a damn ruffiannihilator if she wanted to. “Sorry about that! I haven’t seen either of you in so _long.”_ She gives Kanaya a dour look, as if blaming the Lieutenant for this inconvenience personally. Kanaya smiles thinly and spreads her hands, an unspoken apology.

Karkat grunts. He’s still sprawled spread-eagled on the ground where he knocked him, and seems to be contemplating the humiliation of getting up versus that of staying put. Nepeta makes the choice for him by seizing his elbow and hauling him upright with hardly an ounce of effort.

“You brought new furriends,” she says, staring at Terezi and Vriska. “Who’s this?”

Terezi sheathes her sword, deciding that to have it out would send entirely the wrong impression. Vriska has no such qualms, and has declined to lower her guns from where they’re trained on Nepeta’s chest. Nepeta seems to be entirely unfazed by this.

“Nepeta,” Karkat says, “meet Terezi Pyrope and Vriska Serket. The two most prominent pains in my asses since the Empress took it upon herself to outlaw my general existence.”

“You haven’t changed,” she says fondly. “Nice to meet you both! We don’t get many new faces, around here, especially not ones as interesting as yours.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Karkat glares at her. “Of course I’ve changed. I’m a richly characterized individual with a continually evolving goddamn personality.”

“Sure, Karkitty.” 

Nepeta circles Terezi and Vriska. Slowly, Vriska lowers her guns, slinging one into its holster but keeping the other one in hand. “Curious,” Nepeta says. “You’re Fur-iska Serket, aren’t you? The gamblignant?” 

“Archagent to the Second Alternian Empire, actually,” Vriska says, with ill-concealed smugness. “I used to be a gamblignant. My career’s on hold, for obvious reasons.”

“And you’re Terezi Purr-ope?” Nepeta pauses in front of Terezi, gives her a once-over. “The legislacerator?”

“Well spotted.” 

“Neat.” Nepeta claps a hand on Terezi’s shoulder. It almost knocks Terezi to her knees. “Well! You _have_ to tell me how that happened, but not right now. I saw the airships. I bet you guys didn’t just come to see me.” She sighs. “As much as I would apurr-eciate it.” 

“This,” Karkat says, getting up and wincing, “is Nepeta Leijon. She’s a Colonel, although you’ll catch her actually using that title the day hell freezes over, and not a second sooner.”

“It’s stuffy,” Nepeta complains. 

“It’s the dignified way to address a goddamn commanding officer, is what it is.” 

“Just because you think ‘General’ makes you seem impurrtant —”

“I’m not going to be lectured on maturity by someone whose quirk is fucking cat puns, thanks —”

Kanaya coughs. “What a convenience it is,” she says snidely, “that we are at liberty to hold these kinds of arguments, and not under any kind of duress. How nice it is that we are rich in both time and options, and are under no imminent threat of death that might make this entire interaction both inane and actively dangerous to our welfare.” 

Karkat flushes and folds his arms, nodding sharply. “Fine,” he says. “Nepeta, you said you knew about the airstrike.” 

“Yes.” Nepeta sounds similarly chastised, and beckons them towards the clearing. “The base is this way. Sorry, Cat-naya.” 

“Kanaya.”

“Kanaya. Sorry.”

They begin walking again, in the same direction, although Nepeta leads them on a slightly different course. She and Kanaya flank Karkat on either side, and Terezi and Vriska bring up the rear of the group.

“We need to use the ships,” Karkat says, quietly. Terezi’s ears perk up.

Nepeta doesn’t answer immediately. 

“To fight the Fleet?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s your plan? Fighting?”

Karkat bristles. “We don’t have a lot of options,” he says. “The Condesce suggested pretty damn clearly that she’s going to be leading the charge on the planet, when she comes. That means that we’ve got a shot at killing her, and to do that, we need to survive the charge.” 

Nepeta hums noncommittally. “That’s a ticket you can only cash once, Karkitty,” she says, her tone remaining light. “You don’t have enough to lose a battle and stay afloat.”

“Well, if we lose this one, we won’t be needing them anymore, anyway. It’ll be over.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Did you miss the part of the message where she threatened to raze her own goddamn planet to the ground?” Karkat notices her silence. “I know you saw it,” he says. “Don’t bullshit me.”

“I saw it,” she says. It gives nothing away.

“What? Do you think I should turn myself in, instead?”

“Don’t be dense,” she says. “I’m just saying that you should make sure you can’t run before you stand and fight.” 

Karkat seems to consider this.

“I don’t want to run,” he says. “Even if I could, it’d mean people dying. Either way, people are going to fucking die. This way, maybe —”

Nepeta cocks her head.

“I don’t fucking know,” he says. His voice is brittle. “Are you going to help or not?”

She blinks in surprise. “Of course I’m going to help, Karkitty,” she says, mildly bemused. “It was only a question.”

They broach the edge of a wide clearing. About halfway through the glade, Nepeta and Karkat vanish, fizzling out of existence. Terezi sags in relief.

“Ah,” she says. “Thank goodness. I feared there would be much more walking involved.” 

She steps through. The invisibility field offers a mite of resistance before letting her pass through, and a wide swath of forest vanishes to reveal a huge complex of broad grey buildings, tall and miserable-looking. A layer of barbed wire trails the top of a steel chain link fence, and the buildings form a border around the central courtyard. Each looks miserable, drab, and a thoroughly unpleasant place to spend one’s sweeps. It’s the opposite of the kind of place Terezi imagined someone like Nepeta would live. 

Vriska presses through the invisibility field, shuddering at the sensation, and blinks at the sight of the place. “Classy,” she remarks. 

“Old prison,” Nepeta says brightly. “We took it, freed all the prisoners, and made it into our base! Useful, isn’t it?”

“Exemplary,” Terezi says, and casts a look around the anterior yard. A whole part of the gate has crumbled away, leaving a horrific security hazard, and some of the windows on the bottom floor are broken; a layer of heretical graffiti coats almost every flat surface, and quite a few that aren’t, but it seems structurally sound, anyway. Nepeta leads them through the courtyard and shoves open a pair of two-ton doors without difficulty.

The interior of the base looks just like a prison would be expected to. The halls are narrow, grey, smithed from cement and brick, with caged lanterns dangling from the ceiling. It splits and twists into labyrinthine corridors, nothing like the bureaucratic comfort of Karkat’s compound, and Vriska noticeably shifts with discomfort upon crossing the threshold. Terezi slides her fingers through Vriska’s without saying anything, and Vriska does not pull away. 

Nepeta strikes up a conversation with Karkat, chattering about some humiliating childhood incident. Terezi examines her scent. It’s shockingly straightforward. There’s no deceit, no subtlety to Nepeta’s character; she’s a simple person. Every inch is genuine. For a troll to have lived as long as she has, almost too much to be believed. 

A shred of a memory occurs to her, and stiffens.

“Vriska,” she says, quietly. She tugs her hand, forcing her to slow down until there’s at least fifty yards between them and the trio ahead.

“What?”

“Leijon,” she says. “Right? That was the name?”

“I think,” she says faintly, “I think — Vriska — Equius had an ex-moirail named Leijon.” 

“No.” Vriska’s grin splits her face, rapidly approaching shit-eating levels of delight. “ _No.”_

“I mean, I might be remembering wrong, but —”

She looses a wild cackle that startles the three trolls up ahead, summoning several wary looks their way. “That’s _excellent,”_ she gasps. “That’s the best. Jesus Christ. Colonel Tightass himself? _Her?”_

“Colonel Tightass?”

“Yeah, I know I’ve done better. Sue me.” She snickers. “That’s incredible. I wonder who dumped who.” 

“Do you really?” Terezi inclines an eyebrow. “I doubt Equius would have known how.”

“If I didn’t think it’d lead to the worst conversation of my fucking life, I’d ask her about it,” Vriska muses. “ _Zahhak._ Wild.” 

Terezi makes a noise of assent. They enter a large hall, probably the dining area, where their steps echo on the stone and whispers carry from the other side of the room. It’s densely populated with wrigglers, all wearing the Sign on their backs. Silence falls when Karkat enters, quickly followed by a chorus of whispering.

They pass a gaggle of wrigglers, clustered together and working on some kind of joint project. Their eyes linger on Vriska and Terezi while they cross the room, and Vriska instinctively bristles.

“They’re just curious,” Terezi says, attempting to soothe. “They’re not —”

“Nosy little buggers?”

“Maybe that,” Terezi concedes. “But you can’t blame them.” 

“Au contraire.” 

“Oh, for God’s —”

“You’re the Summoner’s descendant?” 

Vriska turns. It came from a kid standing behind her — can’t be much older than six sweeps, with his specibus gripped in his right hand. He’s holding the hammer wrong, but he doesn’t seem to be in the mood to use it. From the scent of him, he’s verging somewhere between brown and mustard blood, as are the pair of twins next to him.

“Yeah,” she says. “What’s it to you?”

“Serket!” Karkat yells from the next hallway over, growing irritable. “Keep up!”

“Hold on, asshole!” Vriska glowers in his direction.

The rustblood shifts from one foot to another. “You’re a blueblood,” he points out.

“Got any other sharp observations, wriggler?”

“Vriska,” Terezi reprimands. Vriska sobers. 

“Saw you on the promo,” the rustblood says.

“Yes. That was a thing I did. Does this interaction have a point, shrimpy?”

“Vriska,” Terezi repeats, even more chastising. Vriska gives her a flippant look and narrows her eyes at the rustblood.

“Look,” she says. “Whatever beef with me you’ve got, hash it out right the fuck now, junior, because I’m a busy troll and I’ve got a hotheaded bulgelick of a boss riding my ass every second I’m not quickstepping to his satisfaction.”

The rustblood stares at her like she’s started speaking Old Alternian. Terezi sighs.

“She’s real,” she tells the kid. “You happy?”

He dithers, smelling like anything but. Terezi claps a hand on his shoulder, intending to be comforting, probably coming across as threatening instead. She’s much better at the latter than the former. It’s no wonder.

“Chin up, wriggler,” she says. “She doesn’t like most people. Eat your vegetables. Defy the Empire. Don’t bother us again.” 

When she releases him, he bolts. Terezi watches him go, faintly amused.

“Dunno what his deal was,” Vriska grunts.

“Can you really not tell?”

Vriska frowns. “I didn’t do anything to him. And I don’t think I offed any of his friends. He can’t be old enough to have a long grudge.”

Terezi pinches the bridge of her nose. “You can’t imagine.” 

“No!”

“Thank God I don’t like you for your brains. Vriska, you’re a celebrity.”

It blindsides her. She blinks, her brow knitting, and snorts. “Why?”

“Because some trolls have bad taste in role models. You’re the descendant of two historical figures, fill in the blanks.” 

She remains quiet for a moment, frowning at the floor. “Really,” she says. “Like, what. He thought I was —”

“He probably ran off to his moirail to brag about talking to you. Or he was just weird. Who knows!” Terezi shrugs. “Congratulations! You’ve got a fan.” 

_“Why?”_

“You did the promo yourself. You put your name on it, didn’t you think people would see?”

Vriska gestures at Terezi helplessly. “You were on it, too,” she says. 

“I’m not a brand name revolutionary.”

“But, like — still —”

“Hey!” Karkat’s head appears around the corner, lip curled in familiar disgruntlement. “Are you two coming along in the next fucking century, or have you not noticed we’re on a kind of tight-ass schedule?”

“You’re one to talk about tight-ass —”

“Vriska,” Terezi sighs. “Light of my life, fount of my joy, all I ask is that you acknowledge how terribly easy you make it for me to do this: _phrasing.”_

“Fuck y—”

“Hey,” Karkat snaps. “Hey. _Hey_. You two coming or fucking not?”

“And another one,” Terezi says. She tugs at Vriska’s elbow, and strolls down the corridor in Karkat’s direction, striking a leisurely pace. “You’re two beasts of a feather.” 

“Fuck you,” Karkat says. “Pyrope, you’re with me. We’re going to run through battle formations. Serket, you’re with Kanaya.” He points down a separate hallway. “Who just went that way, as you’d know, if you’d been staying with the class. Pyrope, the war room is in the east wing.”

Vriska shoves her hands in her pockets and shrugs. “Fine,” she says. “Not that it’ll do much good, but you two can do your nerd thing in peace, I guess. Catch you later, Vantas.” She nods to Terezi. “Counselor.” 

“See you soon,” Terezi says. Vriska saunters off in the direction Karkat indicated. She watches her go; then, turning to Karkat, claps her hands together and says, “Let’s begin the fun part.”

 

* * *

 

“No. Redo the western flank, that’s gonna go up like dry paper if they’ve got _Dreadnought-_ class destroyers.”

Terezi braces her hands on the hastily sketched war-map of the Alternian system, trying to keep her tone civil. The moonlight skirts low under the blinds on their tiny office of a war room, a repurposed conference room, and a sniff in the clock’s direction would likely be more disheartening than it’s worth. Karkat stands opposite her, eyes darting around the map with suspicious dissatisfaction. _Hours._ They’ve been at this for hours; the last of his other advisors plead mercy and fled long ago.

“And why,” she says, delicately, “exactly, would they have _Dreadnought-_ class destroyers, General?”

“Dreadnoughts are fantastic siege vessels. Strong cannons, fine shields — not fast, but they’re not gonna be on the run, obviously, so that’s not a problem. Honestly, a better question is why we _weren’t_ planning for them having Dreadnoughts. We’re gonna have to redo most of the western flank.”

“The reason that we weren’t planning for Dreadnoughts,” Terezi says, tight, “is because Dreadnoughts are a class of ship almost exclusively licensed to ruffiannihilators, who are a _land-based combat division._ They are designed like tanks because they often serve as transport vehicles for high-security prisoners, and maneuver with all the sophistication of a cluckbeast with its head cut off. They will be nowhere near the front lines of a _space battle._ ” Bitter, she adds, “Would you me to plan for an assault from the Handmaid, next?”

Karkat clears his throat, the only acknowledgement of his mistake. “Redo it anyway,” he barks. “It’s weaker than the eastern flank, and we need a new formation to take into account our new strategy for the first prong of ships.”

“Not all flanks are created equal,” Terezi grits out. “If we rearrange the formation, we make the east flank weaker in bolstering the west. That is generally how finite quantities function.” 

“Yeah, but if they figure out we’ve got less cannons centered around that area, guess where they’re headed —”

“In which case our eastern formations can approach from the side and pick them off before they have the chance to complete an advance. I can continue repeating the rationale we came up with for that decision ten minutes ago, if you like, sir.” 

“I’d _like_ you to redo the damn flank.”

She breathes slowly through her teeth. Steps away from the board. If she spends much more time in this room, they’re going to have a shouting match, and she isn’t eager to do so with her General on the eve of their potential annihilation. 

“General,” she says, carefully. “Having spent a considerable amount of time discussing tomorrow’s course of action, I think it best to take a short interlude —”

“What do you mean, ‘interlude’?”

She bites her tongue. So much for diplomacy. “I mean,” she says, “I would like to take a moratorium and find my quadrantmate.” 

“Are you shitting me?”

“I’m being quite serious,” she says, her cadence still neutral, although to maintain it as such requires considerably more effort than before. 

His knuckles turn white on the table. “We,” he says, “are expecting a fucking invasion of the Imperial Fleet in T-minus _fourteen hours,_ and you wanna go hang out with your fucking moirail?”

“I want,” Terezi says, chipper and infuriated, “to fucking sleep.”

It surprises him into silence.

“I’ve been awake for twenty-three hours,” she hisses. “I am nowhere near peak performance! I am running on caffeinated bean fluid and desperation, Karkat, and my faith in the general project will not be enhanced by being forcefully separated from my quadrantmate and a warm cupe until I have to go to war.” She gesticulates at him in frustration. “Don’t you feel tired, General? Does your mutation somehow allow you function without any fucking sleep?”

“I’m tired, too,” he snaps. “But I have a goddamn responsibility —”

“Which you’re going to fail spectacularly if you try to fulfill it like this,” Terezi says. “I get it! You are under a lot of stress! Congratulations, Second Troll Christ, you have experienced what it’s like to be — brace yourself — a person! But I, for one, refuse to go on like this. Either go find someone else to yell at, or find a puddle of sopor somewhere and have some miserable fucking dreams.”

“I don’t really dream,” he says shortly. 

“Lucky you.” She rolls her eyes. “Enjoy the rare privilege of a nightmare-less existence. I’ve known trolls who would kill for that. You’ve got virtually no reason _not_ to sleep.” 

“They’re not — dreams.” 

She cocks an eyebrow. “Do you have something to say, General?”

“I don’t sleep because I get these weird fucking . . . visions. I guess.” He rubs his neck. “It’s not dreams because I’ve never seen any of it before. And there’s no way I could imagine something this bizarre. I’ll see these . . . people. I think. Some of them are normal, they’ve got, like, regular horns, regular hair. Odd clothes. Or I’ll see these shitty dreamscapes, just. Incredibly fucking weird dreamscapes. And then there’s — not _people,_ exactly, because they’re weird, and all, like, hornless. With white hair.” 

Terezi frowns. “That doesn’t sound like a person.”

“Exactly, right? But I couldn’t just dream up shit like that.”

She rubs her forehead and leans against the wall. “It could be another species,” she points out idly. “During the Age of Conquest, a variety of creepy-crawlies came out of the woodwork. Some of them were sentient. Maybe you’re dreaming about one of them.”

“The Age of Conquest was hundreds of sweeps ago. I’m not that old.” 

“Perhaps your ancestor’s visions can be genetically transmitted.” 

“Nice,” he bites out. “More shit I inherited from the old hierophant. Serket’s got mind-control, Sollux got telekinesis, and I get shitty daymares from alternate lives!” He laughs, harsh.

“I suppose it’s better than nothing.”

“I’m sure you got some freaky lawyer skills or some shit,” he says, waving at her. “Don’t feel left out.”

“Oh, no. I’m very happy to be left out of the dynastic confusion.” She tilts her head. “I am beginning to realize that although you do exaggerate your own bad luck — and you do, to an almost incredulous extent — your estimations of its shittiness are not nearly so out of proportion as I initially suspected.” 

“ _Thank_ you.” 

She folds her hands. “You know,” she says. “Spending the night before battle with your friends won’t kill you. By nature, I mean. It may! But there are a number of things in any given situation which could kill you. In this room alone, there are at least half a dozen. So when I say that enjoying a few nanoseconds before the great disaster begins will not kill you, I mean that only in the sense that it is not an inherently deadly course of action.”

He laughs. It scrapes against his throat, but it’s earnest.

Karkat leans back in his chair, heaves an exhausted sigh. “Fuck,” he says. “I sound like an asshole. I can’t — I’m not going to take this one off, but I won’t be a dick about it. Go find your moirail, or whatever. I’ll call in Kanaya, we’ll keep working on it.” 

It’s not the victory she wanted, but it’s a victory she’ll take. Kanaya can deal with the General herself. She seems to be best at it. 

“Thank you, sir.” Terezi retreats to the doorway, but does not immediately move to exit. Instead, she says, “General?”

“Hm?” He glances at her absently, quickly returning his attention to the battle map. The lines of exhaustion under his eyes seem even clearer, now.

She wonders how long Karkat has been fighting his revolution. She acknowledges that it could conceivably be since he was hatched. His reasons for being high-strung about this culmination of all his efforts are not, she concedes, entirely without substance. 

A note of gratitude wells on her tongue, but she nips it in the bud. To voice it would have seemed sentimental and vapid, and he wouldn’t have believed her. 

“Thanks,” she repeats, at the risk of sounding inane instead. He nods, waving her out, and she leaves without a proper goodbye.

 

* * *

 

Vriska sits on a tree root at the edge where the woods meets Nepeta’s yard, mechanically dissembling one of her guns. The disparate parts of the weapon lay strewn over her overcoat, which she has removed to make a makeshift desk space. Her sleeves are rolled up to her forearms, and the edge of a tattoo peeks out from the interior of her elbow. As Terezi observes, she detaches the barrel from the rest of the body and slides a cloth down its length, removing a layer of grime with methodical swipes.

When she sees Terezi coming, she reassembles the gun, cocks it, and slides it into her holster. The entire process takes her a matter of seconds. Then she rises, swinging her overcoat over one shoulder, to greet Terezi.

“Hey, Counselor,” she calls. “The General done with you yet?”

“Probably not.”

She makes an annoyed sound at the back of her throat. “What’s he got you doing?”

“Planning,” Terezi says, rubbing her eyes, “mostly. We’ve been discussing strategy for the past several hours, and he’s still not satisfied with the formations. Every few minutes he’ll decide that the last forty have been in vain, and demand a reconstruction of the whole project.”

Vriska grimaces in sympathy. “Sucks ass.”

“Well put. What did they have you doing, anyway?”

“Battle formations,” she says. “Had me running through the Fleet’s usual methods of attack, what their ships were like, et cetera, et cetera. Gave them as much as I could. Eventually, they got all they wanted, let me have my leave of the place.” She indicates the building. “If cabin fever had a body, that’d be it.”

“They repurposed a prison. It’s not meant to be airy and accommodating.”

“I get that. Still a miserable-ass place to live.” 

“Fair.” 

Vriska dusts off her hands. “You free for the rest of the night?”

“Probably not,” Terezi acknowledges. “However, I’ve done enough work that playing hooky will be forgivable.”

“Sweet,” Vriska says. “Wanted to show you something. C’mere.” She starts off towards the easternmost building, a cinderblock of a structure with a length twice that of the main complex. Black-tinted windows line the place, and the doors are taller than Terezi thrice over.

“Did you happen upon this during your free time?”

“More or less,” Vriska says. They draw closer, and Terezi can make out the smell of engine oil and grease from behind the doors. “Asked Nepeta where the hangar was, and she said it was in the old food shed. Apparently they’ve got a small fleet in here, and more in their Uropan HQ. ” 

“A reassurance. What are we doing here?” 

“Making use of local resources,” Vriska says, deliberately enigmatic. She grasps one of the door’s large handles and tugs, to no avail.

“It’s locked,” Terezi points out, rather needlessly. 

Vriska removes a pin from her pocket and kneels before the lock, eyeing the opening speculatively, and then sliding the pin through. She fiddles with it, angling it around. Something clicks, and she slides the door open with her other hand.

“Analog,” she says, triumphant. “Told him he should’ve upgraded.”

She steps through. Rows of speedlifts stretch out to the end of a tall chamber, lacking any kind of order — nicked Imperial vehicles and public transit, private cutters and bulky cargo ships with bulbous chambers for loading resources. At night, the emergency lighting along the central aisle shimmers iridescent green. 

The _Scourge_ sits at one end, her hull still gleaming and unscratched. She hardly looks like a ship at all, without the fine coat of detritus and dust that comes from space travel, and to Terezi’s surprise, Vriska doesn’t immediately head towards her. Instead, Vriska strolls in between lines of land based speedlifts, inspecting the smaller, two-person models.

“Are we going somewhere?”

“You like this one?” Vriska ignores the question and thumps the side of the nearest lift. It’s a slick little two-seat cutter, the dark green of Nepeta’s caste, with a windshield paneled like insect eyes.

“It looks perfectly nice. I’m also not sure that my opinion should be taken all that seriously, when it comes to machines.”

“This one it is, then.” Vriska clambers up on the pilot’s side and fidgets with the electronic seal. She produces some kind of pronged metal gadget from her pocket and wiggles it against the lock, which releases a high beep of complaint, and then yields the door. 

“Should I ask where you got that?”

“Nicked it,” Vriska says, unnecessarily. “One of Aradia’s mates is an engineer. Palmed it off him last night.” 

“Are we stealing the ship, too?”

“Borrowing. I’m not giving Aradia’s pal his wireless lockpick back. _This_ , I am.”

“Did you get permission to borrow it?”

“Are you even vaguely aware of who I am as a person?”

“Borrowing without permission is just temporary stealing, Vriska.” 

“Lawbug,” Vriska mutters fondly. She jiggers something in the engine and it starts with a healthy purr. “Ha! Got it.” 

“Are we stealing a speedlift?” Terezi poses the question tiredly, even as she climbs up to the passenger-side door. “Actually, don’t answer that. If I know what you’re doing, it makes me an accomplice.”

“I — what, really?”

“Yes. Or a conspirator, I suppose. An interesting question that I’d rather not have answered.” 

“Don’t worry. I’ll take the fall for you if we get caught, dear.”

Terezi wrestles the door open and falls into the passenger seat with as much grace as can be expected, given the speedlift was designed for a troll much taller than her. “My hero,” she deadpans.

Vriska doesn’t reply, occupied with figuring out the controls. “There’s probably an accelerator somewhere around,” she muses. “Unless it’s a motion sensor control, in which case the steering handles should have a lot more room to maneuver. Maybe it’s a valve? Wouldn’t make much sense, but I’ve seen stupider designs.” 

“Should I get out and push?”

“Shut up, I’m working on it. Maybe — let’s try this.” She pulls down on a slim lever beside the steering handles, and the lift leaps into the air, its engine whining at the sudden burst in speed.

Vriska twists the lever down a few gears to avoid breaking through the roof of the hangar, crowing. “Hell yeah,” she says. “Who can fly anything? _I_ can fly anything.”

“Yes. Truly, your powers of pulling random levers are unmatched.”

“Fuck you. Who’s the troll? _I’m_ the troll.” 

“Well done, Troll Dominic Toretto,” Terezi says dryly. “You have successfully started the engine.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Vriska says, unbearably smug. “Can it, Troll Brian O’Connor.”

 

* * *

 

She pilots the speedlift like it’s a spaceship, which is predictable but disconcerting nevertheless. More than once, she cranks the steering holds like she’s guiding a vehicle with a much broader turn radius, and the smaller lift goes careening in whichever direction she wants. This never fails to inspire a slew of profanity from Terezi, who for most of her life enjoyed the stable transport of a government-authorized vehicle, and to whom Vriska’s style of driving is only marginally more comforting than being strapped to a cholerbear’s back and sent barreling down a mountain road. For the most part, however, the ride is steady. Vriska at the helm is Vriska content; a quiet satisfaction settles onto her features. Hers is not a face upon which peace settles naturally, but it does, now.

From the copilot’s seat, Terezi takes periodic licks of the window. Trees speed past, blurs of brown and green and blue like wet paint being blown across a canvas. The compound vanishes to a speck behind them, and disappears from the rearview. Vriska taps the dial, aligning the compass, and turns left.

“I should ask where we’re going,” Terezi points out. 

“You’ll find out.” 

“We have to be back at the compound by dawn.”

She isn’t worried, which she realizes only after having given the warning. This isn’t an escape attempt. She would know if it was; she knows Vriska well enough to tell, if it was. 

“We will be,” Vriska confirms.

They break the treeline and speed across dusty expanses of countryside. The Capitol, still smoking gently, broaches the western horizon. Terezi presses her tongue against the window for a long while, soaking it in.

Vriska glances in her window and notices what she’s focused on. “Never thought I’d live to see that,” she says. “Big ol’ city, nothing but dust.” 

“They’ll rebuild it,” Terezi says. “No matter what happens, I suppose.” She taps one finger on her cane, idle. “Life goes on.”

“Mm.”

They approach what appears to be a vast white mountain range, gentle peaks sloping into one another like the ridged spine of a great beast. Gradually, Terezi recognizes them to be made of sand. Vriska does not flag in speed, but instead takes the incline headfirst, shooting up the side of the first dune at an almost ninety degree angle to the ground.

“Where are we?”

“Dune sea,” Vriska says. “Lines most of the coast, separates the beachside landdweller hives from shallow-water seadwellers. A bitch to cross, if you don’t have a speedlift.” She crests over the peak and then shoots down the other side, a descent that could outstrip most roller coasters. Terezi clings to the side of her seat. 

“Lucky us.”

The lift skims across rows and rows of dunes, white sand glowing green under the moonlight like radioactive material. Terezi rests her head against the window. The scent of salt grows stronger, and eventually, the grey mass of the ocean appears in the distance. The sand thins and turns darker. They’re approaching the sea. 

Vriska pulls the lift to a halt when the sand begins yielding to stone. The water appears over the crest of one dune, vast, channeled into a small inlet by staggering limestone cliffs that rise several hundred feet from the water. The beach itself hardly looks hospitable — it’s made from thousands of pale grey stones, unstable underfoot, the lowest washed dark by the tide. Trees sprout around the edges of the inlet, but most of it looks to be an austere, unforgiving place. The only life to be found are smears of green moss clinging to the underside of some stones and the featherbeasts that leap and dive on the horizon.

Vriska helps Terezi down from the speedlift and starts off in the direction of the sea. Terezi follows her, making ample use of her cane in her attempt to descend the steep slope. They march across the landform to a small cave, tucked near the water, into which Vriska ducks. Terezi hesitates at the entrance. It seems to extend back far into the ground, even underwater, and reeks of saltwater and moss. Luckily, Vriska doesn’t seem interested in plumbing its depths; she reemerges shortly, grasping a piece of driftwood in one hand, and wedging something else in her pocket.

She brandishes the driftwood triumphantly. Terezi leans nearer to inspect it. The letters _V.S._ are carved into the side, with cluckbeast scratch handwriting. 

“Still here,” Vriska crows. “Knew it. So’s most of my loot, funny enough. Whole chests of stuff back there. It’s small tubers compared to what I made on the _Vagrant,_ but hey, not a bad start for a wriggler.”

“Was this your storehouse? The proverbial buried treasure?”

“Among other things.” 

Vriska flops down on an outcropping of rock. The beach peels away from the cave in a steep cascade, stopping where the water rushes up to meet a lip of stone. The wind shrieks, but it batters against the rising cliffs that enclose the inlet. On the beach itself, under a full green moon, the temperature is comfortably cool. 

Terezi sits down next to Vriska. Featherbeasts roost on the cliff sides, and their shrill song echoes around the beach, but aside from them, the area is silent. Nothing but the wash of water against stone, carving it away with infinitesimal touches, an ancient sound. 

“I came here when I was a kid,” Vriska says. Her voice seems deafening compared to the previous quiet. It quavers with uncertainty.

“Why?”

“When I played FLARP. I used it as a base of operations. Out in the bay, there’s this stretch of sandbars and shipwrecks that make navigation damn near impossible, unless you’re really good. My ship wasn’t all that big, so I could weave through it and dock here on campaigns that lasted longer than one night.”

“Why did you have to dock for the day?”

“I didn’t have anyone else to handle the ship during the day,” Vriska says. “I found this place when I was trying to figure out a water route around Kors. After I stopped playing FLARP so much, sometimes I’d come here for the quiet.” She sticks her thumb back towards where the speeder is parked. “Since you have to off-road it through the dunes to get to the beach by land, and it’s a pain in the ass if you don’t have a speeder, most people don’t try. I had it pretty much all to myself.” 

“Convenient.”

“Yeah. Wanted to take you somewhere we wouldn’t have to worry about being overheard. Or airstrikes.”

Terezi imagines Vriska, six sweeps old, navigating a ship through a bay of broken vessels and coming ashore on the rock beach. Imagines her sitting by herself, waiting for day to pass, so she could sail back to her lusus and keep working.

“It’s a pretty place,” she offers, instead of what she wants to say, which is something more personal and much less appropriate for what Vriska seems happy to keep a casual conversation.

To quiet the tender impulse, she brushes a kiss over Vriska’s temple. The gesture trembles on a precipitous edge between pale and ash, and nowhere near concupiscence — this isn’t the way that matesprits are meant to kiss, isn’t the way that moirails are meant to kiss. It’s an act of consolation, but nothing more. A good moirail would dredge up her past hand over unwilling fist and hash it out; a good matesprit would distract her until she forgets it wholesale; Terezi does neither. 

“Are we going to talk about the telepathy thing?”

Terezi considers. “I was all right not talking about it,” she says, tactfully. “I think — it gave me a lot of information. I’ve had some time to process that information.”

“The results being . . . ?”

Terezi rigorously examines her shirtsleeve. “I’m not your moirail,” she says. “Or your matesprit. And you’re not my kismesis, although God help us, sometimes you can act like it.” 

“I —”

She swats her shoulder. “But,” she says, “I think — that’s all right.”

Vriska tilts her head. “That’s all right?”

“Mm.” Terezi nods. “I — we’re all right like that. Just being like that.”

“So we’re not quadrantmates.”

“I’m whatever you want me to be. But I don’t think you want me to be any of those things, either.” Terezi shrugs. “I’m not going to have another moirail, matesprit, kismesis, while you’re around. Couldn’t. I wouldn’t enjoy it if you did, either, although obviously I’m not going to stop you, if you like. Again, I don’t think that’ll be an issue — I’ve been in your head.”

Vriska considers this.

“So, what,” she says. “You’re my . . . ?”

“Yes,” Terezi says. 

Vriska takes a deep breath.

The ocean laps against the shore. A flock of featherbeasts flit across the bay, skimming low and flinging water into the air with the beating of their wings. It glitters like thousands of tiny green diamonds.

“Hey,” Vriska says abruptly. 

“What?”

She twists, putting some space between them, and roots around in her pocket. “Got something for you,” she says. Her scent twists with apprehension. Terezi folds her legs and waits warily. 

“Did I forget an anniversary? I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“No, it’s —”

“There was this airstrike I had to deal with, you know, and I just didn’t have the time to get out to Jaared’s—”

“God, you’re such an asshole,” Vriska laughs. “No. I don’t think we really have one.”

“We’ve _got_ to have one, though, don’t we? I mean, the night we met? First moirallegiance? Last night, that’s got to count for something, right? What with the concupiscent business, that never happened before. I’m calling it. I say we get three different anniversaries.”

“Babe, it’s adorable you think I’m going to remember _one_.”

“You offered to name your ship after me, darling, I don’t know what gave you the idea that you’re not an incorrigible romantic.”

“Shut up and let me give you your gift, you pretentious dick.” 

“Oh, _swoon._ What wooing. The pusher trembles.”

A pebble comes winging over and hits her square on the head, and Terezi laughs. “All right,” she says. “Fine. Go ahead.”

Vriska opens her hand. A square sapphire ring sits in her palm, the jewel settled in a thick, engraved silver band. 

“Stored this in the cove,” she says. “Forgot about it. Probably nicked it off some highblood sucker rich enough to commission shit like this for all their quadrants, but I don’t remember.”

“Oh,” says Terezi. 

“Yeah. Uh.” She holds it out. “That’s, uh, for you. Call it a thank-you gift, or whatever.”

“Is that what it is?” Terezi picks it up and takes a deep sniff. It’s a shade darker than Vriska’s blue, but close enough — the distinction between the color of blueberries at the beginning and end of the light season. 

“If you want.”

“What else would it be?”

“I dunno,” Vriska says, kicking her feet on the rocks. “S’your ring. What do you want it to mean?” 

“Is it a quadrant ring?” 

Vriska turns bright blue at the top of her cheeks. “No,” she says. “Yes? In light of the thing we said about quadrants? Probably not, I guess.”

Terezi rotates it. It gleams like the sea when she rotates it in the light, refractions giving the impression of undulating waves.

“Look,” Vriska says hotly. “You can do whatever you want with it. Hell, you can toss it into the ocean if it’s not your style or something, or give it back, what do I —”

“No. It’s mine.” Terezi holds it out of reach. 

“Well, fine, then.” Vriska scowls for effect, but she’s obviously pleased.

Terezi slides it on. It’s a pinch big for her fourth finger, but if she slides it onto her middle finger, it fits just fine — it was probably cast for a troll larger than her.

“It’s very pretty,” she offers.

“Yeah, well. I have good taste.”

“You _rob_ people with good taste.”

“Negligible difference.” Terezi leans over and rests her hand on Vriska’s shoulder, tipping her head against Vriska’s arm. 

“Uh huh.”

Vriska is still holding something back. She fidgets, crosses her legs, uncrosses them. Rolls her neck. Terezi bides, waits for her to broach the subject on her own. After a few minutes, she grows impatient of having to reshuffle her limbs every time Vriska readjusts, sighs. 

“Out with it,” she says. “What other gorgeous jewelry have you corpse-burgled me, Serket?”

“Nothing. That’s — also, I didn’t _corpse-burgle_ , that’s plebeian — but that’s not the issue.” Vriska finally settles on a cross-legged perch, and resolutely eyes the horizon. “I don’t know how familiar you are as regards gamblignant tradition.”

“Presume that most, if not all, of my familiarity was gleaned through what you have told me.” 

“Right. So, uh. There’s a thing with — with ugly scenarios. About ‘em. A kind of promise.”

“A contract?” 

“Kind of.”

“Intriguing.”

“Yeah, well. It’s for our own good, most of the time. See, you don’t wanna get caught.”

“Really,” Terezi says. “Are you serious. I had no idea.”

“Shut up. It’s serious. Getting caught is the worst case scenario, if you’ve got a dossier like a gamblignants, a dossier like either of ours. The first directive is to get out of captivity, but the second is not to let them do what they do to criminals to _you_. And if you don’t think there’s a chance of escape — I mean, there’s always one way out.” 

Terezi takes a second. 

“Oh,” she says. “That’s . . . rather grim.”

“I don’t believe in it,” Vriska says, briskly. “Didn’t. Course, I was always good enough to break out, so I didn’t need to think about things like that. Until the subjugglator trial, which . . . I mean, your chances of walking out were riding on me, so it wasn’t an option then, either.”

“No?”

“No. And I don’t wanna die, obviously. But sometimes there are extenuating circumstances.”

“What are you implying?”

“If I had a crew,” Vriska says, frustrated, “I’d ask them. But I don’t. And Aradia _won’t_ do it, I know she won’t, she’d be scared of me hanging around. But —”

“I don’t like where this is going.”

“Here’s the deal,” Vriska says fiercely, staring Terezi in the eye. “Something goes wrong up there — we get caught, the Movement fails, Karkat dies, anything so bad there’s no coming back from it — and you kill me.” 

Terezi flinches. 

“No.”

“No, _listen,”_ Vriska counters, “listen. I’ve been on this side of the law longer than you have, I know how it abides. You live free or die, dear, because the other thing makes those two options look equally appealing. The things they will do to you — the things they will do to _me,_ Terezi, to either and both of us, will make you want to kiss the Handmaid when she comes for you. If she comes for you.”

“You are asking me to do something awful.”

“I’m asking you to do something kind. Once you know we’re past winning, when the Empress is going to get her mitts on us come whatever, kiss me goodbye and put a sword in my back. It’ll be mercy.”

“No,” Terezi says, and stands up. Vriska scrambles to her feet, and chases after Terezi as she makes her way down the rocks, to the shore. 

“I can’t do it myself,” she says. “There’d be the risk of me making the wrong call, of underestimating or overestimating the odds — you know the lay of a situation better than I do, you’ll know when things are past the brink. But I won’t, and I wouldn’t be able to do it, even if I did. I won’t be able to make myself, when the time comes.”

Acid gnaws Terezi’s organs away, hollowing her into a husk. “So I kill you,” she says, “and then I get to go live out the rest of my sweeps experiencing whatever horrific things you think they’ll do to you. Thank you, Captain, for your generosity.”

“ _No._ No! That’s the trick of it.” Vriska reaches into her coat pocket and produces a small black box, soft with velvet. She holds it out in the shell of her palm and Terezi, tentatively, accepts it.

“What’s this?” She cracks it open. Inside, nestled in the slit that’s clearly meant to house some piece of jewelry, sits a circular white capsule.

“A gift from an old friend,” she says. “Cyanide tablet.”

Terezi almost drops the box.

“What the fuck,” she says flatly.

“One point three grams. For reference, half a gram will put down a troll my size.” 

Terezi snaps the box shuts and holds it out. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

Vriska presses it back into Terezi’s hand and folds her fingers over it. “Take it,” she says. “After I’m dead. After you know — you _know_ — that you’re not getting away. Which I hope you’d know already, if you went ahead and killed me, but one troll moves faster than two, and they’ll be busy enough with my body that —”

“I’m not having this conversation,” Terezi says. “I’m not. The fact that you are making me have this conversation is actually very repulsive to me, in a number of ways, and fuck you for trying!”

She throws the box back at Vriska, who catches it. “Take that and shove it up your nook,” she spits, and climbs down the rocky hillside without looking back.

The water laps and lathes at the beaches with a softness uncharacteristic of the Alternian oceans. Here in the cove, sheltered from the elements by the cliff, there is an uncanny quiet, an absence of wind, of storms, of rain. The green moon casts a cool filter over the light there, while the pink moon, a crescent barely thicker than Terezi’s nail, sits on the edge of the sea. Terezi climbs down to where the water meets the land and sits, her pants growing damp, her face bitten by sea spray. She digs her nails into her palms and breathes great lungfuls of air that tastes like salt.

By and by, Vriska comes and sits down beside her, folding up her long gangly legs underneath herself. Her hair flickers behind her like a black flag hung from the mast of her spinal column. She does not speak. Terezi, inexplicably, absurdly, feels guilty.

“You seem to labor under the impression,” she says quietly, “that killing you will be any easier for me than killing me will be for you.”

“It will be.”

“Even on the eve of our very probable deaths,” Terezi says, exhausted, “you remain insufferably benighted.” 

“And you’re still stubbornly opposed to being clear.” 

“You are selfish,” she says. “That’s what this is. You are incapable of imagining that anyone loves _half_ as much as you do, that anyone could feel _anything_ as strongly as you do, the thrice-blighted _Captain_ Vriska Serket, because that would imply that for once in your life, someone is better at something than you.” 

“I don’t think that way.” 

“Yes, you do. Even if you don’t realize it, you do. Life is one very big game, and you have always been beating it! Congratulations. You are the winner. It is you.” 

“I’m not,” Vriska objects, furious and cringing and miserable.

“Yes! That is exactly what you are!” 

“I’m not trying to sound like a bitch, okay? I’m not. I don’t want to be. But I’m telling you the facts. And the facts are that you’ll get over me a hell of a lot faster than —”

Terezi punches her. 

Vriska rolls back onto the rock and narrowly avoids hitting her head. Terezi rubs her knuckles, two of which have split and drizzle teal down her wrist; her first instinct was to use her cane, but that would have dealt a more severe wound than Terezi could in good conscience deliver.

“Fuck,” Vriska spits, the word spilling a gob of blue over the rim of her lip. “That _hurt,_ Terezi.”

“It was intended to. Say something like that again and I’ll deal you another.” 

She pinches the skin at her wrist to stem the blood-flow to her hand. Vriska notices the wound, and crawls forward; when she reaches for it, however, Terezi pulls her hand away. They remain like that, frozen, at an impasse for a few interminable moments.

“It’s possible,” Vriska says, gradually, “that I was being kind of an ass.”

“Was it, now.” 

“Sometimes, I say things. And I don’t really mean them. But I say them, anyway.” Vriska curls into herself. The arc of her spine speaks of loneliness. “Because I think they’ll get the other person to do what I want.”

“I have noticed.” Terezi scrubs a smear of teal from her thumb-joint. “There is very little, in fact, that I do not know about you.” 

“Then you’ll know that I’m not good at saying things. About myself. Either.” 

“No. You’re not.”

“Which, like, I mean. You don’t, really, either.”

“Deflection is not one of your more attractive traits,” Terezi says lightly, and Vriska reorients herself quickly.

“No. Yeah. But, talking about myself, strictly speaking, I never say what I mean. That isn’t to say I lie, because I don’t. But I don’t say things.” 

“A fine distinction.” 

“It is.” She kicks her feet gently on the rock. “I thought I should, though. Because we’re probably gonna die tomorrow.” 

Terezi waits.

“I kind of think,” Vriska begins. Stops herself. “You were —” Stops herself. Looks at Terezi, helpless.

“I’m glad I met you,” says Terezi, because she’s kind. “Even if we die tomorrow, I’ll still be glad.”

Vriska cocks her head quizzically. 

“I loved being a legislacerator,” she says. “I loved the law. _Love_ the law. I still do. It is the only thing in my life that has ever given me purpose. I would have willingly spent every sweep I had left in service to it. And in the space of a few perigees, I have lost every connection I ever had to it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” Terezi says simply. “You were worth it.”

This seems to strike Vriska with unintended force. She turns her face away, as if Terezi won’t be able to smell her scrubbing at her face, anyway. Terezi lifts her face to the breeze and lets it blur her sense of smell, offering the only privacy she can.

“I don’t know how to say that,” Vriska says. It sounds almost angry. “To you. _For_ you. I don’t know _how_ , I can’t —”

“I know,” says Terezi. “It’s all right. I know.”

Terezi regards Vriska, who gave her a ring pried from a dead body and a cyanide capsule in the ringbox, and thinks that there will never be anyone else like her, not for Terezi, not ever. She lets the information settle in her chest, locked behind the rigid clockwork of her bloodpusher, where it will stay until they carve it out of her and find Vriska Serket’s name written on the still flesh.

With a distant, mild resignation, she comes to terms with it. It is a vaguely helpless feeling.

Vriska holds her hand like she’s got diamonds at the valleys of her knuckles. Terezi considers that at the end of everything, when they die, when they slit Vriska open neck to nook on the autopsy table, she will have _Terezi Pyrope_ written on her bones.

Vriska kisses her. It isn’t a quadrant kiss. There’s nothing red about it, nor black, nor conciliatory. It carries strange, pervasive warmth, and an unbearable softness. Terezi leans into it. 

Neither of them have a bucket. Nor is one readily available, on an outcropping of rock at the edge of the sea. That doesn’t stop them; the mess will be washed away, come high tide. Vriska clings too tight, and sometimes Terezi pushes too hard, resulting in a wince or a slight hiss of pain, but when it happens they back off, try again. Vriska kisses wildly, and Terezi touches without sophistication. It’s cold and wet and often uncomfortable. It’s the best feeling that Terezi has ever known. 

There isn’t a quadrant for it. Vriska isn’t her moirail, or her matesprit, or her kismesis. There isn’t a word for what she is — Terezi wishes there were, but it’s unnecessary, in all honesty; she _understands_ what Vriska is, and so does Vriska. That’s the important thing.

When it is done, they put on their clothes, and kiss each other again, and climb the rocky ledge back to their ship, and leave without saying anything. 

They aren’t the kind of people that songs are sung about. Perhaps they aren’t good people, either. But that hardly seems to matter, now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _So come along, it won’t be long till we return, happy_  
>  _Shut your eyes; there are no lies in this world we call sleep_  
>  _Let’s desert this day of hurt_  
>  _Tomorrow we’ll be free_  
>  —Troll Sia, _Soon We’ll Be Found_


	19. Overture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _“Trolls did not have a uniform conception of the afterlife. Among the Mirthful Church there was a notion of the blessed Shangri-La, the nature of which outsiders have never been permitted to know; it is generally assumed that, since it is regarded by juggalos as sacred, it is assuredly a place of unimaginable horror. For the most part, however, troll-kind were atheists, discouraged from religious sentiment with the understanding that such might distract from the deification of their preexisting monarch. However, some of the Signless-Sufferer’s texts indicate hints of an afterlife in his philosophy: in particular his last sermon, in which he described in explicit detail the hell to which all those who helped the Empire were going.”_
> 
>   
>  —Rose Lalonde, _Observations on an Alien Species_

“Here’s how things are going to go,” Karkat says.

 

* * *

 

The ships arrive at dusk.

Nepeta’s call reaches at least a few hundred. They line up before the compound, on the lawn, and when they run out of room there, they take to the skies: Karkat’s fleet, or Feferi’s, or perhaps neither’s. The call to help spreads out far and wide, and Alternia answers. 

There’s no organization to the vessels. The ships share no similarity in model, color, or type, but are rather every kind of ship it’s possible to steal. Their singular unifying factor is the Sign painted on their sides in scarlet, and in a way, Terezi finds that oddly fitting.

The _Scourge_ rests on the lawn of Nepeta’s complex, glossy and out of place among the mongrel crew. Early that night, Terezi and Vriska set off down the lawn to fuel her, accompanied by a skeleton crew of the brave and bullheaded trolls they could recruit for the task, and prepare for liftoff.

It’s the first day of the Light Season. Terezi notices this fact while she sharpens her sword.

 

* * *

 

“We’re going to have three strike teams.” He sketches out a model of the area around Alternia on his desk. “The first will be on my ship, running interference from behind the lines. We call the shots. After our ships clear the way, my team will board the _Alternia_ and take out the Condesce, God willing. Yeah, I know Feferi is supposed to show up and do that for us, but you know what? I haven’t lived this long by counting on seadwellers.” He draws a second dot, this one right on the surface of Alternia. “This is Kanaya’s team. She’s going to be running Mission: Hail Mary, A.K.A., ‘we drop our ace in the hole on the Condesce’s face and pray it works.’”

Terezi raises her hand. “Translation, please,” she requests.

“Translation: Kanaya’s team is going to kill the Mother Grub,” he says, and Terezi inhales sharply.

“Karkat —”

“No, listen. Kanaya’s lusus, may its blessed spirit rest in peace, gave us the best parting gift any dead lusus ever could: an egg for another Mother Grub. We hold all the cards. Unless she at least agrees to negotiate with us, we drop-kick that egg into a black hole, and bye-bye, all future generations.”

Vriska looks impressed. Terezi, with whom this tactic had not been discussed, is vaguely discomfited.

“But we won’t _actually_ kill it,” she says.

“I’m not going to end our species,” he says, offended. “Who the fuck do you think I am? But the Empress doesn’t know that. She thinks we’re all dangerous idiot revolutionaries — great! No reason for her not to believe we’d kill our species’ only hope for the future.”

Kanaya nods. “It also gives Feferi the strongest position from which to bargain, if it comes to it,” she adds.

“Right.” Karkat draws a third dot, this one further out from Alternia than the others. “Which brings us to the third strike team. This one will infiltrate the _Miracle,_ which holds the Grand Highblood, and assassinate him, while I and my team deal with the Empress. Church and State. One-two punch.”

Vriska raises her hand. “Question,” she says.

“Yes.”

“Why do we care about him? I mean, he’s just an old fucking troll. Probably can barely walk, at this point.”

“Stupid question,” he says, “that I’m going to answer anyway. We care about him because without him, the subjugglator army doesn’t have a head. It’s called a decapitation tactic, and it’s one of the most effective ways to disarm an opposing force known to the critically understaffed.” He rubs his hands together. “Now! Who’s going where.”

Terezi stares at the dot indicating the _Miracle._ The Magistragedy is on that ship. 

“I’m on the third strike team,” she says. She does not pose it as a question.

 

* * *

 

The Fleet arrives when the moons are both full and high.

Ship after ship, lines upon lines of black battalions and red star cruisers. They sit just beyond the stratosphere, unmoving, locked in orbit around the planet like a thousand armed satellites.

“That,” Vriska says, helping load the cargo bay of the _Scourge_ with ammunition, “is what we in the gamblignant business call a BFS.”

Terezi drops another crate in the cargo cavity and wipes her forehead. “BFS?”

“Big Fucking Shitheap,” she says. “Also known as a tactically difficult situation.”

“That can’t possibly be lingo specific to the gamblignant business.”

“Oh, yeah, because you’re the expert.”

 

* * *

 

Karkat furrows his brow. “Really?”

“If you’ll have me. I’ve been informed I’m handy with a sword. And if you and Kanaya are leading separate strike teams, I think it appropriate for me to man the third.”

He studies her. Whatever he’s looking for, he seems to find it.

“Fine,” he says, at length. “If you like.”

 

* * *

 

Aradia approaches while Terezi is debriefing the _Scourge’s_ hastily-assembled crew, holding a long, slender grey gun with a needle erupting from the snout. “Terezi,” she calls, brightly. “Can I borrow you for a moment?”

“Sure.” Terezi steps away from the _Scourge’s_ group, standing in the shade of one arched wing. “Any news from command?”

“Keep doing what we’re doing, mostly.” Aradia pats the side of her injector. “And — small note — they want you to get injected with one of these, just for safety’s sake.”

“Hold on,” Vriska interrupts, backing out of whatever conversation she was having with a supply officer. “What’s that, and why are you pointing it at my moirail?”

Aradia hefts the gun. “Safety protocol for all high-ranking soldiers,” she says. “Tracking device. It deactivates if you die; otherwise, it’ll tell us where you are, and if you’ve gotten captured.”

Vriska lifts an eyebrow. “What else does it do?”

Aradia frowns. “Nothing,” she says. “What else would it?”

Vriska shuffles, folding her arms. “That’s an Imperial tactic,” she says, and Terezi studies the instrument with renewed interest. “Special agent corps have to wear those. They’re bad news.” 

“Yes, well. They’re a smart strategy, and Sollux was very clear about their utility.”

“If an agent goes rogue,” she says, stabbing a finger at it, “the tracker can be triggered to release an influx of neurotoxins. Dead in seconds.”

Aradia’s lips part, and then she pins them closed, shaking her head. “This doesn’t do that,” she says firmly. “Sollux engineered these ones.” 

“Did you watch him do it?”

“I don’t like your tone!”

“And I don’t like what you’re about to put in my bloodstream!”

“It’s not even going in yours,” Aradia says sharply. “This one is just for Terezi.”

Terezi’s eyebrows rise. “Really,” she says.

“Yes. They were very clear. Vriska was not to be injected.” Aradia rolls her eyes. “And I can see why. Honestly, it’s not like _this_ is the most dangerous thing you’ll be confronting tonight.”

“It’s the only thing I can’t get rid of with a bullet,” Vriska retorts, and Aradia sighs with frustration, but she hefts the gun at Terezi with an inquiring hesitation.

Terezi pauses, sends a sidelong glance Vriska’s way. Vriska catches it and shakes her head. 

“I’ll pass, thanks,” Terezi says brightly. “Not that I don’t appreciate it! But I have a thing about needles. And a thing about having irremovable substances inserted into in my bloodstream.” 

Aradia sighs, puts down the injection gun. “Fine,” she says. “Suit yourself! I’ll tell Sollux you declined.” 

“Out of curiosity,” Vriska says, guarded, “why don’t I have to get one?”

“Sollux said you were already taken care of,” Aradia huffs. “Which is why I don’t get that you’re being antsy about it, all of a sudden.”

Vriska recoils. “I haven’t,” she says. “I most definitely have fucking not — I never let anyone shoot anything into my bloodstream, thanks, and absolutely not one of those things.”

“Weren’t you part of a special forces team?” Terezi inclines her head. “In the Fleet?”

“I had mine neutralized after I left,” she says. “There’s a way to demagnetize the receptor, it makes the trigger defunct — what the fuck do you mean, I already have one?”

“I don’t know! I didn’t ask! He just said you did!” Aradia puts her hands up. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

“Well, I’m about to shoot _someone,_ so you tell me whether or not it should be good ol’ _Tholly!”_

“The surgery,” Terezi says.

Vriska stills.

“You went under,” she says. “With Sollux, at Feferi’s palace. It would have been a simple procedure, after the plate removal. You wouldn’t have noticed.”

Vriska claps her hand over the space on the back of her neck where the plate was, fingers probing the incision. “I want it out,” she says. Her voice is suddenly calm, which, for Vriska, is far more chilling than outright fury. “ _Out_. Now. Aradia, I need a magnet, an EMP, a radio, and a circuit board, and I need them all between now and when we leave.”

“Vriska, it’s extremely unlikely that —”

“Did I ask for your opinion, or did I ask for a magnet, an EMP, a radio, and a fucking circuit board?”

“We don’t have time,” Terezi says. A stone settles in her gut. “Look, I understand —”

“No, you don’t,” Vriska says. It’s stiff. “You don’t seem to, so I’ll help: that ship is not moving until this thing is fucking gone.”

“Then you’ll miss your window,” Aradia bites out. “I’m already late for my own liftoff, I can’t afford to help. And I told you that Sollux isn’t the kind of the person who —”

Terezi presses her lips together. “If you think Sollux is the one making that call, you’re even dumber than you look.”

Vriska’s practically shaking with rage. “I’m going to kill him,” she continues. “I am. This is — I’m going to actually fucking _kill —_ ”

Terezi grabs her wrist. “Listen to me,” she snaps. “We don’t have time. I do understand, yes, and after this works out, our first order of business will be to help alleviate your horrific invasion of privacy, but at the moment, it is in their best interests not to threaten their safety, so if you’re really concerned with them killing you, I would suggest that you remain on their good side by executing the task they rely on you to!”

Vriska’s jaw works for a moment.

“After we do this,” she says, more to Aradia than Terezi, although she looks at Terezi while she says it, “I’m going to get Sollux Captor in a locked room, and you’re not going to interfere.”

Terezi files the probability of Sollux’s imminent mauling under the mental category marked ‘ _probably will be urgent at some point’_ and lets it slide from her immediate set of concerns. “Sure,” she says. “Sure. You get dibs on Captor. Will you get on the ship, now?”

Vriska gives Aradia a look that clearly describes how very not okay the entire situation is, and Aradia returns it with an equally obstinate one of her own. Terezi ends the standoff by announcing, “Measure your bulges later! I, for one, have an Empire to topple,” and marching onto the ship. 

 

* * *

 

“I can do it,” Vriska volunteers.

Karkat guffaws. “Like fuck you will,” he says.

Vriska’s expression grows pinched. “I can,” she says. “And — more relevantly — you don’t have anyone else who could.” 

“It’ll be incredibly difficult. You’ll have to evade the church fighter pilots, and the _Miracle’s_ own cannons. I need someone who knows what they’re doing.” 

“Ah,” Terezi says, putting up her finger. “ _Miracle_ won’t be firing heavyweight cannons. No targeting accuracy. At our distance, she’d be more likely to use laser fire, but at that range, chance of rebound off _Scourge’s_ shield is too high. Most likely, they’d leave the offensive work to close-range high-power target lasers, like the kind they use on their fighter pilots.”

Vriska gestures to her, looking entirely too smug.

Karkat says, “That doesn’t change the fact that you need to outfly those goons.”

“I’m the best pilot you’ve got,” Vriska says. “I can fly anything, anywhere.”

“I’ve met a hundred trolls who said they were the best pilot I had. Half of them are dead because they weren’t.” 

“We did it before,” she says indifferently, and Terezi realizes that she’s right. 

“On the _Vagrant,”_ she says, and Vriska nods.

“Perigees ago,” she says. “Flew her through a Church blockade.”

“Unsuccessfully,” Karkat points out. “You got caught.”

“Yeah, but we’re trying to get caught, aren’t we?” Vriska shrugs. “We want to end up on the _Miracle_. We just need to not get shot out of the sky first.” 

“Which would be a miracle in its own damn right. Back me up on this, Kanaya.” 

“I’m not touching this,” Kanaya tells him. 

“Why the fuck not?”

“To put it concisely,” Terezi says, deciding that the argument has gone on long enough, “I am going on this mission, and Vriska will be coming with me. Whether she flies the ship or not is your call, but her being on it is not.” 

Karkat takes a very long, very beleaguered breath.

_“Fine,”_ he says. “You know what? Fine! Fine. Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. Fine! Go! Go nuts. It’s only about as impossible as everything else about this shithive situation.”

 

* * *

 

Vriska coos with delight when she gets her hands on _Scourge’s_ control panel. Actually coos.

“Good old girl,” she says, “God, I’ve missed you.”

She runs her hands over the controls, tweaking the odd knob, setting the star charts into order. The ship hums underneath her like a contended animal, its engine whirring with healthy speed. 

“You’re nicer to your ship than you are to me,” Terezi says, lounging over the copilot’s chair. 

“Jealous?”

“Absolutely. I’m half-mad with it.”

“Aww.”

“I’m going to challenge her to a duel for you.”

“Oh, don’t worry, baby. You’re the only organic for me.” 

Vriska bats her eyelashes. Terezi kicks her calf without vigor and strolls away from the pilot’s seat. 

 

* * *

 

“Aradia will run interference from your wristtop,” he says. “You’ll have a private line to her station onboard my ship, the _Catalyst,_ and I expect you to fucking use it. If things go haywire, call for an extraction or reinforcements. She’ll patch you through. She’ll also have the operating map of the _Miracle —_ ” he thumbs a switch on his husktop, and it projects a floating holographic map of the ship in question — “at her disposal. This information came to as at no small fucking cost to its acquirers, so make good fucking use of it.”

“Good,” Vriska says. “Wouldn’t have anyone else.”

“Vriska,” Aradia says, surprised and touched.

“What? It’s not _affectionate_ to say that all your other pilots are fucking incompetents.” 

“Okay,” Karkat says. “All of you: out! I’m going to check in with Feferi. Everyone, hop to, get a fucking move on. We have a time limit and it’s real and it’s going to fuck us all in the ass if we don’t put a spring in our goddamn step. Aradia, you stay. Sollux seems to listen to you, which I’ve never been able to say of myself, so.”

Everyone in the briefing room begins to trudge out. He calls them back when they’ve almost reached the door.

“This would normally be the point in the program,” he hedges, “where I deliver some big fucking speech. About truth, or safety, or freedom, or whatever the fuck. But — you know — I don’t know that that would be all that helpful, now, so I’ll just say this: most of us are going to die if we don’t win today.” He looks at his hands, collects himself. “And if we win today, some of us will still die. If you’re one of those people, I want you to know that we’ll remember you, if we win. You won’t be forgotten. No one who dies today will be.”

He clears his throat. “If we win,” he says.

Terezi inclines her head. “Well said,” she offers, and he gives her a grateful smile.

“Thanks,” he says. “Go get the fuck off this shithole planet.”

 

* * *

 

The _Scourge_ drifts over the edge of the green moon. In the distance, the Imperial Fleet and Karkat’s ships trade fire, a blur of laser cannons that stains the black sky in neon color. There is no sound. This is disconcerting to Terezi, who has to periodically lick her window to remind herself that a battle is happening anywhere at all.

“Hey, Megido,” Vriska says, activating the comm on the dashboard. “You there?”

“Ready.” Aradia’s voice issues from Terezi’s wristtop, tinny but clear. “Standing at attention onboard the _Catalyst,_ currently orbiting Alternia in the gravitational pull of the pink moon.”

“Fantastic. This is _Scourge,_ reporting for duty. We’re currently orbiting Alternia in the gravitational pull of the green moon. We’re ready to exit orbit and pursue _Miracle,_ over.”

“Roger, roger. Proceed with all due speed, over.”

The _Scourge_ picks up speed and heads toward the juggalo flagship. The thing blots out a whole portion of the sky like an oil spill, enormous and misshapen, oozing a dark energy that steals her breath upon approach. Its shape has grown too familiar to her.

The chucklevoodoos hit Terezi like a suckerpunch. Cold consumes her, prodding her thinkpan into lockdown mode, urging her to retreat from reality. She grits her teeth and her claws bite her palm. The pain grounds her.

Several other crewmates seem to be suffering the same problem. Vriska, face tight with the chucklevoodoos’ effect, reaches over and cranks up the radio before turning it to a static channel.

“Get out of your own fucking heads,” she shouts.

The blast of white noise shakes people back to reality. Terezi welcomes the abrasive sound, distraction as it is from the creeping fingers of ice sneaking down her back.

A set of subjugglator ships detaches from the _Miracle_ as they approach. Vriska hisses a breath through her teeth, and mutters, “Here we fuckin’ go.”

The _Scourge_ dips low to avoid the first wash of laser fire. Terezi clings to her seat as the center of gravity adjusts, and Vriska hisses a curse as a stray bolt catches them on the wing. It doesn’t damage the system, but it shakes the course enough that they have to twist severely to get back on track. 

Another juggalo cruiser swoops in before the windshield, cannons blazing, and she wrenches up on one of the controls. It puts the ship into a sickening twirl, effectively avoiding damage, but also forcing them to make a circular rotation around the _Miracle,_ breaking their course.=

“Megido,” she bites out. “Chances of getting onboard the damn ship at present.”

“It’s behind a shield,” Aradia reports. “And we have the issue of the bogeys to deal with, first. They make it hard to get close, or slow down sufficiently for boarding.”

Vriska gnaws her cheek, examining the dashboard. “Continue evasive maneuvers,” she says, curtly. “Make sure we don’t take hits from those things. We need a way to get on that ship, _fuck.”_

Terezi examines the area. “You said their fire thinned when they got close to the _Miracle,”_ she offers. “Force them to refrain from attack.”

Vriska’s head snaps up. “We’ll fly behind the _Miracle,”_ she says. “Then dock. It’s an open port, to allow the bogeys to go back for refueling and armament once they’re out — we’ll use it to board.”

“There’s still the issue of the big-ass shield!”

_Scourge_ rolls to avoid a wave of cannons. Vriska’s hands fly over the controls. “If we charge the _Miracle_ at top non-light travel speed,” she says, “we can break the shield. It’ll close after us, that’ll spare us the fire from our bogeys — not that it matters, since they won’t risk firing on their own ship. If we brake fast enough after that, we can slow down in the space we’ve got between the shield outskirts and the docking bay, or at least get to a speed where we won’t collide with the bay upon entry, so we can dock.”

“Um,” Aradia says. “Yes? Technically? But also, you’re relying on your ship’s ability to drop several thousand miles per second of acceleration in a matter of about, mm, _three of them,_ and that’s not even to mention the assumption that you nail the timing.”

“I always assume that,” Vriska says, off-handedly, clearly not paying much attention to Aradia’s warning. “I haven’t been wrong yet.”

“Yes, you have!”

Vriska shouts, “Accelerate to maximum speed. Throttle it, bitches,” and several trolls busy themselves at their stations. The _Scourge_ flings herself forward, the landscape blurring against the windshield, and Terezi’s flattened against her seat.

“Steady!”

She approaches the _Miracle._ Aradia begins shouting, and Vriska, grunting in irritation, reaches over and shuts off the comm.

“Brace!”

The ship collides with the shield with a sound like lightning splitting a tree down the middle, and the _Scourge_ nearly flips on its axis with the impact. Terezi is hurled against her seatbelt, almost choked by the fastener’s press against her throat, and Vriska howls, “Brake!”

Gravity seems to lose track of the proceedings, and abandons its job altogether in its confusion. _Scourge_ decelerates at whiplash-inducing speeds, and distantly, Terezi becomes aware from the increasing heat that the hull is, in fact, on fire.

They hurtle towards the _Miracle’s_ docking bay.

“Brake! Brake, brake, brake, brake!”

Closer.

“ _Brake!_ Lift flaps! Get some fucking friction going _somehow_ , I don’t care how you do it!”

Closer still. With a last shove of forward momentum, the ship surges into the cavity for docking. Terezi is lifted up out of her seat from the force of it, but she slows down, shuddering to a halt in time to avoid hitting the _Miracle’s_ interior wall.

The airlock door slides closed behind them, and they successfully dock on the _Miracle._

A cheer goes up in the cabin. Vriska sits back in her seat, combing a hand through her hair, and Terezi unbuckles her seatbelt with shaking hands. “Nice one,” she says. “Good to know you’ll be able to rub it in Karkat’s face when we get back.”

“Karkat,” Vriska says, with no small degree of satisfaction, “can eat shit. Who’s the best pilot in the galaxy?”

“You are,” Terezi says. Normally she wouldn’t give her the gratification, but she feels she’s earned it, this once.

“ _Fuck_ yeah, I am.” Vriska gets up and shakes herself off. “Okay,” she says. “Rough as this was, this wasn’t actually the mission. Just the really hard, really, really impressive part that precedes it. We’ve still got a troll to kill.”

She’s right. Terezi makes her way over to the exit and braces herself for the possibility of a squadron of juggalos lingering outside the door, of an ambush attack, or something violent of that nature. When Vriska pulls the switch to open the door, she expects to be violently assaulted, and draws her sword with full anticipation of such.

No such thing happens. When the door opens, no one leaps into the gap, nor can Terezi smell anyone outside it. Cautiously, she creeps outside the cabin.

The hangar is empty.

Vriska slinks out of the cabin behind her, a gun in each hand. “Well,” she remarks, “this is a motherfucker of an anticlimax.”

“For once, I wouldn’t consider your appraisal an overstatement.”

“Just say ‘yeah,’ Jesus. You ever wonder how fast your life would move if you cut out the extra syllables?”

“Oh, a good deal faster. But the joy would be all but gone.” She prowls out into the hangar, sword at the ready. It seems to be empty; a few other Church ships occupy the space, but none have occupants. The hangar door at the end of the room has been left open. It looks for all the world like an invitation.

“Yeah,” Vriska says, “nobody’s home. Maybe someone did us a favor and accidentally triggered the airlock while they were boarding, washed themselves into the vacuum.”

“Possible, but unlikely. I suspect trickery.” Terezi descends onto the ground level and peers through the hangar doors. Nothing lies behind them but a dark, unoccupied hallway. 

“Well, not much you can do to plan around trickery.” Vriska trots down the stairs with none of Terezi’s caution. “I vote we just keep going, and deal with clown fuckery as it comes.”

“Not a particularly appealing notion. However, it remains the best one we’ve got.” Terezi turns around. The crew has begun to file out of the _Scourge,_ specibi drawn, jittery with anxiety but prepared for a fight. “Wait with the ship,” she orders. “Guard it, if any subjugglators wander this way. We’re going to find the Highblood.”

“You wanna take some of them with us?” Vriska jerks her head at the more heavily armed members of their crew. “Could be helpful.”

“The fewer trolls with us, the easier it is to move unnoticed. Stealth is of the highest importance. If we’re caught before we get to the Highblood’s chamber, then we’re well and thoroughly fucked.”

Vriska seems to consider debating the point, but lets it slide. “Fine,” she says. “Guard the ship. Get ready to haul ass when we come back, I want to get off this floating hellhole as soon as goddamn possible.”

After receiving a nod of assent, she turns to Terezi. “All right,” she says, squaring her shoulders. “After you, Counselor.”

They step through the hangar doors, and enters the residential portion of the _Miracle_. 

The walls are technicolor. Streaks of every shade on the hemospectrum, up through indigo at least, coat the walls in thick layers of paint. Some form discernible shapes, of trolls, of spaceships, of solar systems. Others coagulate in abstract figures and characters from languages Terezi has never seen. They glow in the dull black light that emanates from the ceiling, turning the entire place into a macabre split between art show, funhouse, and grotesquerie. 

Perhaps even more vivid than the smell of their color, though, is the fact that they _reek._ Sweeps, centuries of dried blood and assorted scraps of meat rotting into a plaster have marinated the interior of the _Miracle_ , making it smell one part corpse disposal site and two parts sulfuric bath. Terezi resists the urge to hold her nose, given that it would functionally blind her, although she has never lamented her unorthodox methods of sight more than now. Her disgust manifests in a tide of bile that surges at the back of her throat.

“That’s foul,” Vriska says, pinching her nose. “Oh, fuck, that’s foul.”

Terezi takes a step forward, bravely inhales a gulp of air, and forges on. “I bet it’s fine if you get used to it,” she offers, although it comes out weak.

“I would rather stick my head between running propeller blades than be the kind of person who gets used to this, and I know for a fact you would, too.”

“On the bright side,” Terezi says, “I now know exactly why Gamzee turned out the way he did.”

“Gamzee? This explains the whole damn fucked-up host. Mystery of why juggalos are so fucking weird, solved: they’re high off their asses on dead troll fumes.”

“There’s one hell of a mystery that no one actually thought was a mystery,” Terezi remarks, “and didn’t even really need solving; but damn if it didn’t just get solved.”

They creep along a few more corridors. Nothing happens. No jumpscares. No ambush attacks. Just quiet, and the horrific pictures drawn by demented members of an ancient cult. The atmosphere grows almost boring, after a while.

“The ship is empty,” Terezi realizes. “No one’s here. It’s just the Highblood and the Magistragedy.”

“The fuck? Why?”

She mulls it over, chewing her lip. “The Highblood wouldn’t have guards,” she says, slowly. “The Church line of succession is dictated by fatal combat. You kill the Highblood, you become the Highblood. It’s not a fair fight if you have to work your way through a praetorial guard first.”

“Since when do juggalos give a fuck about _fair?_ ”

“Since it impacts their chain of command. Strategic move, if you’re Highblood, is to pick all the best fighters and make them part of your guard, so they can’t attack you. That way, the only people who get to try their hand at combat are the weaklings, the ones you know you can beat. If you need your leader to die in battle, you want to make battle accessible. Not easy, mind, but accessible.”

“They still need people to fly the ship,” Vriska says. She approaches the corner and checks around it with her gun held tightly. Terezi, feeling distant and off-put by the ship’s silence, strolls around it without checking. It’s empty.

“That’s true.”

“So?”

“So?”

“So where the fuck are they?”

“Fighting,” Terezi suggests. “Out there, somewhere. Or they left. Or maybe the ship runs on an autopilot; I’ve heard of ones smart enough to navigate.” She walks through an open doorway, entering a long, dead-end hall. “Maybe —”

“Terezi,” Vriska says suddenly. Terezi’s hand flies to her sword.

“What?”

“I got paint on my shirt.”

Terezi relaxes, exhaling through her fangs. “Jesus,” she says. “Don’t scare me like that.”

“Terezi.”

_“What?”_

“Fresh paint,” Vriska says. “On the walls? That’s fresh paint.”

Terezi unsheathes her sword and whirls around. She’s not fast enough.

The doors behind them slam closed. A klaxon blares from the speakers, loud enough to dissemble Terezi’s thoughts, and the distant echoes of hysterical laughter ricochet through the halls. Terezi puts her back to Vriska and drops into a defensive stance, sword out. But no one emerges; no painted faces spring from behind corners, or slide out of crevices in the walls. They remain entirely alone, if more isolated than before.

After a minute without seeing neither hide nor hair of a subjugglator, Vriska lowers her gun. “Check the door,” she says.

Terezi approaches and inspects the lock. “Print sealed,” she says. “Probably reserved for Church elite, given how deep we are in their sacred areas.”

“So we’re not getting back.”

“No.”

“But they haven’t sent anyone to pick us off.”

“No,” Terezi says, frowning, “which doesn’t make sense, seeing as — _the crew._ ”

“The hangar. They’re going —”

Terezi shoves her sword into the slit between door and wall and tries to jam it. “We need to get back,” she says urgently. “They’re trying to cut off the exits, they’re going to —”

“We won’t make it in time.”

“They’re going to kill the crew! We’ll be stranded, they won’t —” She taps her wristtop. “Aradia, alert someone: we need backup directed to the _Miracle,_ immediately, the crew of the _Scourge_ are under imminent —”

Vriska seizes her wrist and barks, “Belay that order,” then shuts off the comm. “What are you thinking,” she hisses. “This is what the crew signed on for in the first place, they’re there to guard the ship —”

“Every subjugglator on this ship is going to be headed for the hangar, if they know we’re here! Every one! They don’t stand a chance —”

Vriska grabs her by the chin and twists her face around to look at her. “Listen,” she intones. “I don’t know how to break this to you, but we are the reason they’re here. They’re here to get us to the Highblood’s chamber so we can kill the old fucker, and nothing more. They knew the risks. They knew the consequences. And if they heard you were considering going back for them when you’re literally a few minutes’ walk from the GHB’s respiteblock, they would call you a pan-addled idiot and a coward for thinking about it.”

“They’re going to die,” Terezi says.

“Yeah,” says Vriska. “Yeah, they are.”

Terezi swallows.

“They’re going to destroy the _Scourge,”_ she says.

“Yeah,” says Vriska. “They probably will.”

Terezi searches her for hesitation. Vriska offers her face for scrutiny. Her features are set with an edge of concentration, an absolute certainty in her purpose and her mission. In the ounce of her pusher that is not aching with grief, Terezi is proud.

“We kill him,” she says. “For them. For the _Pyrexia.”_

“Pyrope,” Vriska says, wryly amused, “we kill him for _us.”_

Terezi grips her by the forearm, a bond, a promise. Then she straightens, removes her sword from the door, and walks onward. 

At the end of the hallway is an enormous black door. Unlike the walls, it bears no rainbow of viscera; this one is marked exclusively in purple blood.

The silence hangs heavy, like a Sufferite from a noose. The klaxon goes on for a few minutes more, and then vanishes. Terezi takes this to mean that the threat to the ship has been annihilated, and her steps land harder for it. 

“If Church succession goes by murder,” Vriska says, “are we Highbloods, if we win?”

“It doesn’t work that way, although I applaud your ambition. You have to be a member of the Church.”

“So what happens if someone from outside the Church offs the Highblood before a juggalo gets the chance to?”

“That,” Terezi says, “is a fascinating question, upon which the Church bylaws are suspiciously unclear. However, there is little precedent upon which to base such a hypothetical, as it has never actually happened.”

“Ah,” Vriska says. “Why?”

“No one wants to.”

“That’s fresh bullshit.”

“No one who wants to,” Terezi amends, “has ever gotten close enough to try. The right to combat extended to Church members is not offered to secular trolls.”

“I always wanted to make history.”

“I think that regardless of how this goes, you can consider that goal fulfilled.”

They arrive in front of the door. It’s not locked.

“You know, it’s piss-poor odds that this works,” Vriska tells her. It’s not panicked, or an attempt at weaseling out of it. It’s a resigned statement of fact.

“It’s two on one. When did you become such a pessimist?”

“He’s kind of a big fucking _one.”_

“I’d bet on worse odds,” Terezi says.

“You don’t gamble.”

“Correct. Which is why you should take comfort in the fact that I am prepared to do this.” 

Vriska bites her cheek, nods, and exhales. “When we survive this,” she says, “we’re taking a vacation. To the nicest system I know. One of those banking planets, you know, with the tropics. I’m swindling some rich fuck out of every aureus he’s worth and using it to buy myself the best drink anyone’s ever seen. You can go around arresting all the aristocrats for tax evasion, or something, whatever it is you do to relax. Maybe play some card games. It’ll be nice.” 

Terezi smiles. “Back at the Academy, I was a mean pool shark.” 

“No shit!”

“No shit. I took half my graduating class to the cleaner’s.” 

Vriska sighs. “You would have been _such_ a great con troll, damnit.”

“What’s this ‘would have been’? I’m still in my prime. You could teach me a few tricks, I could teach you a few. We’d be the most terrifying pair of bandits nobody ever saw coming.”

“Isn’t that illegal? Don’t you have a thing about that?”

“I’d consider stealing from aristocrats a form of ‘unofficial taxation’ rather than theft.”

“Never let it be said that I wasn’t in favor of wealth redistribution.”

“You’re in favor of wealth _appropriation.”_

“What did I say?”

Terezi’s smile broadens. “Banking planet,” she says. “Sounds nice. I could use a vacation.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yes.” 

Vriska nods. “Okay,” she says. “Live through this, and I’ll take you there.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

“Likewise.”

Terezi presses her thumb down on the latch, and the door slides open.

The Grand Highblood sits on a throne the size of a small speedlift on the opposite end of the chamber. 

His limbs are as all as broad as Terezi’s shoulder span. Black curls hang in an unkempt mess of knots, falling down to his waist from a deliberate failure to curate them, as opposed to the Empress’ deliberate black train. He’s dressed in the black habit of a high priest, but instead of the bone vest, he wears a matrix of bone knit over his clothing like a horrific kind of chitin, stained purple and lime green and scarlet. Curlicue horns rise from the peak of his curls, twisting several feet above his head and sallow red. His eyes gleam a fazed orange from beneath a solid bone mask that stretches over his face and down his cheeks, obscuring most of his features; his greasepaint has been applied over the mask, giving his face a skeleton’s lifeless luster. 

The chucklevoodoos from this place alone are powerful enough to render Terezi a shuddering, unconscious mess. But she concentrates on his face — oculars, olfactory knob, mouth, same as any other troll, no different, none — and inches forward, forcing her feet to take one step, two. 

Sprawled over the throne with his legs parted and his weight shifted on one armrest, he regards them without concern. A club dangles, idle, between the fingers of his right hand. 

“Grand Highblood,” she says. Her voice echoes in the enormous chamber, which is windowless, save for a skylight — window? — in the roof. Purple drapes hang along the edges of the room, and there are stains of an identical color smeared over the walls and floor. They form strange glyphs and patterns, the likes of which Terezi is certain someone of her caste and occupation are not permitted to see. 

“Good motherfucking evening,” he says. “SMALLEST PYROPE.”

Her name drips from his tongue like syrup. He catches the - _R_ and rolls it, drawing her name into three syllables. 

“Tell your pet to put down her weapons,” he says. His voice rasps like sandpaper over rock when speaking normally, but when he roars, it shakes the chamber walls. “I do not have the knowing of what good she does think they will do her, BUT IT IS NONE.”

Vriska trains her left pistol on his head in answer.

“She’s not going to do that,” Terezi says. She advances into the block. The doors slide closed behind her, and she represses the urge to turn around. 

The Highblood’s eyes roll over Vriska, lazy, and then he shrugs. It ripples the muscles of his shoulders in a way that makes him look like a marionette. “None of a difference to my own self,” he says. “None of a difference at all.”

“Pyrope,” Terezi says. Her voice squeaks on its way out. It wavers. It struggles to fly. She clears her throat and launches her words across the cavern with as much gusto as she can gather, which, as a former member of the Cruelest Bar, is a considerable amount. “You called me Pyrope,” she says. “Do we know each other?”

“Do we know each other, she asks.” He hisses a chortle. “The girl asks: _Do we know each other._ As if we did not know each other before pupa from larva came, before larva came from bucket, before bucket came from flesh. AS IF I WOULD NOT KNOW YOU BLIND, LITTLE PYROPE. As if it is not in this way that you know me.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, which flutters a bit, but manages, at least, to be clear. “But I’ve never met you, before, Grand Highblood, and I am certain I would remember meeting someone like you.”

“Has nothing to do with meeting,” he drawls. “THAT SHIT HAS NOTHING WITH IT TO DO. Has to do with fortune, you motherfucking pupa. HAS TO DO WITH MOTHERFUCKING SERENDIPITY. Has to do with what the motherfucking Lords of Mirth had set out for you and me, pupa girl, back when we FIRST FROM THE MOTHERFUCKING CAVERNS CAME.”

“We are a little short on time, at present,” Terezi says, “and I hope you will not mind me asking you to be a bit clearer.”

“The meaning under this, you fucking simpleton,” he says, “is that either you will be my murderer, little Pyrope, or I WILL MOTHERFUCKING BE YOURS.”

It rattles the walls. It shakes Terezi’s bones. It carries a deep ring of certainty, a warbling note of persuasion, conviction, and absolute hapless faith. Suddenly, Terezi understands how this troll could persuade others to go to war for him. 

Vriska says, “Hey, fuck you too,” which, in its turn, breaks the tension like a hammer does a glass vase. 

He shifts comfortably to look at her. “And you,” he says. “And YOU. Source of much grief. Source of much woe.”

“Present,” she deadpans. Her voice shakes, too, but she swaddles it in brash indifference that snaps Terezi back to reality. It reminds her of what they are here to do.

“

How many good and faithful died,” he laments, “for want of motherfucking YOU.”

“Not half as many as I’d like.”

“Not for your own merits. No. Not for your crimes, not for your choices. Not because you ever did a THING IN YOUR MISERABLE STINKING LIFE THAT MATTERED. It was your ancestry, wriggler, for which my brothers and sisters’ blood price was paid, and WHAT A PRICE IT DID BECOME.” He gestures to the window. “Do you see this, girl? Come look. COME LOOK AND SEE WHAT YOU HAVE WROUGHT.”

He rises. It sounds like a building being uprooted from its foundation. He ambles over to the glass. He moves like a wild animal, fluid, shambling strides, a drunken kind of grace, for someone his size. 

Vriska does not approach, as he suggests, but she sends a glance out the window. Terezi can’t tell what’s going on, but from the sour twist to Vriska’s scent, it can’t be looking good for the revolutionaries.

“Motherfucking devastation,” he breathes. “A beauty. A work of fucking art, don’t you know? I would thank and praise you for your God damn craftsmanship, IF I THOUGHT YOU HAD FOR A MINUTE INTENDED ANY OF IT.”

He traces one gnarled claw against the glass. “So many dead,” he murmurs. “So many dead. So many good priests, good subjugglators. And NONE OF IT INTENDED. All of it for want —” he extends his arm, pointing at Vriska — “of a motherfucking MISTAKE.”

The Grand Highblood turns and faces them. “Made by whim,” he says. “GIVEN LIFE BY ERROR ALONE. Made by traitor and criminal. Product of wretched incompetency. A failure of the drones to let your wicked mixture into the blessed pool. FAILURE OF THE MOTHER GRUB TO ACCEPT IT. Failure of the lusus that laid loving hand on you, failure of THAT FUCKING LUSUS TO LET YOU LIVE.”

Vriska’s jaw tightens. Her hand tightens on her gun. 

“Failure of the bureaucretins to conscript,” he continues. “FAILURE OF THE PRIESTS NOT TO CULL. And failure, my dear, failure of your ancestors to ever spawn another that would SUFFER THE FUCKING DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR THEY DID.”

He picks up speed. “My brothers and sisters did not die for your sins,” he says. “They did not die for your crimes, for your violences, for your TRESPASSES AGAINST THE CHURCH. For the murder of a few underpriests, they did not die. FOR A FEW HERETICAL MUTTERINGS, they did not die. For your LONG-ASS LIST OF CRIMES AGAINST THE EMPIRE, they did not die. Were it these alone, to the legislacerators it could have been left. To the legislacerators IT COULD HAVE FUCKING BEEN LET LIE. But these were not your crimes, small sister. 

“They went for your own motherfucking AUDACITY — YOUR _UNRIGHTEOUS DARE —_ to EXIST. You and your blood. Your infinitesimal ounce of REVOLUTIONARY BLOOD.”

He’s almost halfway across the room now.

“When I was young,” he seethes, “when you were but GENETIC FLUID AND LONGING GLANCES, PUPA — I thought that it took empires to fell empires. I believed that the gods would not let MIRACLES FALL WITH EASE. I thought that when our nemesis came, and I KNEW THAT THEY WOULD COME, it would be a motherfucker of greatness. I thought it would be A MOTHERFUCKER OF SOME ENTROPIC FORCES OF WHICH I HAD NO COMPREHENSION. I thought my beloved state would fall only TO THE MOST VICIOUS AND GODLIKE OF PRINCES. But I was a FUCKING FOOL.” 

Vriska’s expression continues to darken throughout his speech. Terezi’s throat feels thick. She cannot bring herself to speak. The closer he gets, the more her boots feel frozen to the floor. Her legs are lead. Her feet are stone. 

He pulls up in front of them. “An ounce of blood,” he repeats. “An Empire, a Church, a hundred thousand lives, all for an ounce of blood. How far that ounce has carried you, wriggler. How much you have shown yourself to be of Nitram. HOW LITTLE FUCKING SERKET, YOU.”

Vriska draws her gun on him. 

“You deny,” he says. “YOU CHAFE. YOU THINK ME WRONG?”

“Motherfucker,” she says, and her voice is smooth and clear as silver — “I’m the most Serket that anyone’s ever been.” 

Then she shoots him in the face. 

It strikes the center of the mask and splinters it, knocking him backwards. Terezi, shaken free of her reverie, leaps forward and slashes at his side, catching her sword on his armor and lashing a notch in the bone. Half a second later, his club comes whistling around in the air, and she drops to the ground, rolling out of reach. It whizzes over her head, quick enough to stir her hair, with the force necessary to level a brick wall.

She bounces back up, landing on the balls of her feet, and shifts into a difference stance, one hand on her outstretched sword, the other thrown back for balance. Vriska flanks her, a gun in either hand. 

They fight.

The Grand Highblood moves like landslide, like avalanche, like tide. There’s no dexterity nor finesse to his strikes, but they fall like the hand of fucking God, and once he’s swung, it’s impossible to stop. There’s an uncanny speed to his movements, too, although for all the world he looks to be moving slowly — one moment his club drifts around his shoulder, and the next it’s hurtling towards Terezi. It forces the pair of them to play permanent defense, ducking out from his strokes, skipping out of his reach. He doesn’t land many hits, but it means that they can’t, either; Terezi can’t do anything unless she’s close enough to be within range of the club, and Vriska doesn’t have the finesse to make the shots that they need. 

Terezi dances forward and lays an array of testing strokes around his legs, each of which he bats away as if they were dueling with toothpicks. Any useful bloodletting area on the torso is covered by armor, as is his face, neck, and shoulders. His legs are free, but they’re also massive, and whatever wounds they’ve managed to incur there clearly haven’t done much except slow him down. 

Vriska sends another round of fire into his side, where it catches on the bone armor, sending shards of cartilage flying around him in explosions of dangerously sharp shreds. Terezi dances around it, hissing when one catches her in the upper arm.

“I can’t hit him when you’re shooting,” she says. “If I get too close —”

“I can’t shoot him if you’re within range! I might hit you!”

“We can’t —”

The Highblood lunges forward. Vriska pulls the trigger and her gun clicks fruitlessly. She tosses it to the side and draws another one from a holster inside her jacket, firing off three quick rounds into the same place on his vest, drilling a hole in the armoring. Dark, right purple weeps from behind the point of impact. Terezi feels a momentary, if pointless, flash of relief; he _can_ be hurt. 

She seizes the opportunity of his surprise and leaps, testing the bounds. Her sword falls on his upper arm, lashing a cut in the narrow crevice between plate and plate of his armor. Pride rears its head, but it’s quickly snuffed out as he rolls his shoulder joint and summarily ignores it, bringing his club down with an earsplitting CLANG on the place where she had been a moment before. Hers is a dueling weapon, and she is a small troll. She can’t muster the momentum to deal out heavy hits, or remove major appendages.

The club rears around again, brandished high over his head. She backsprings out of range and Vriska empties three guns in quick succession, rapid-fire, drawing blood from his forearms, and even striking his own bone. But it doesn’t change anything. The pain doesn’t _slow_ him. Terezi wracks her brains for a strategy, a way to work around the change, but none occurs. The whole point of dealing non-fatal injuries is to impede fighting ability. In order to fight someone like this, who doesn’t _care_ about them, the only effective wound a TKO. 

Vriska tosses another gun to the side and makes eye contact with Terezi. She cocks her last pistol and flashes one finger.

One shot.

The Highblood lurches toward Vriska. He twirls his club through his fingers like Terezi might a pen. 

Terezi examines the framework of bones latched over his chest. They’re tightly wound, and although a blade could theoretically slip through them, it would have to have a clean entrance point; if she tries a stroke from the side, it’ll catch on the matrix. Bullets have the same problem. All the vital areas are covered by the armor, except his legs.

The map of arteries appears in her mind’s eye.

She holds her hand at waist-level, makes eye contact with Vriska. Vriska gives a minute nod.

Terezi lets out a high-pitched cry and lunges for the Highblood’s leg. With a few seconds warning, he stops her before her sword can make contact with his ankle, but that’s fine. What’s less fine is how his arm catches her in a brutal backhand, sending her flying across the room and landing on the square of her back.

Pain flowers from her spine, an almost paralyzing ache. Her teeth snap shut from the force and she clenches them to keep from screaming. It feels like her bones are being pulled apart from the inside, splintered into fragments by a thousand metal hooks. 

Vriska yells her name. Terezi flips onto her knees and shoves herself into a crouching position, ignoring how the world blurs and twists sickeningly for a moment. Pain is fine. Pain is workable. Pain means she’s not dead.

The Highblood is lumbering towards Terezi. Her attack drew his attention to her, and he’s turned his back on Vriska, for the time being. The immediate problem becomes that the brunt of his attention is now focused on Terezi, whose spine is clamorously demanding a moment to mourn its wellbeing. 

Vriska aims her gun. Terezi straightens her back, despite the ache. 

“Do you want to know what’s motherfucking funny,” says the Highblood, “HERETICAL AND PESKY MOTHERFUCKERS?”

“No,” says Terezi, and Vriska shoots him again. 

It strikes him in the upper thigh, and blood soaks through the fabric with unnerving speed. Vriska lets out a little crow of victory, but the Highblood just keeps moving towards Terezi. He doesn’t notice the wound. He doesn’t feel the pain. And he doesn’t notice that it’s slowed him down.

Terezi steps forward, ignoring the instant wave of pain that seizes from her undoubtedly bruised back, and drops into a defensive stance. He tosses his club in one hand, and she feigns a cut to his left side, which his club drops to deflect.

When his right flank opens up, she hooks back her arm and flings her sword. 

He doesn’t see it coming soon enough. By the time he sees it coming, it’s already there. 

Her blade slides in between his fifth and sixth ribs, and emerges with a quiet _snick_ from the other side. He takes a half-step backward, looks down with reflexes several seconds too slow. She darts forward, grabbing the handle. He makes no attempt to swat her away or deter her.

She wrenches it out, and he tumbles to the floor. 

The Grand Highblood is slow, and old, and she feels disgusted that so many died for him.

She approaches and sets her foot on his chest. When she presses, blood seeps from the wound between ribs.

“You are under arrest for crimes against the Alternian Empire and her agents,” Terezi says. “You have the right to notify your moirail of your impending demise.” 

The Highblood sways. Vriska, leaning on the arm of the throne, gives Terezi an unreadable look. 

“You are hereby sentenced to death for treason, perverting the course of justice, and crimes against trollkind.” 

After a moment of hesitation, she says, “You have the right to select your last words.”

Not really. She could be justified in depriving him of any Constitutional rights, at this point, and frankly, the legal code she’s citing probably doesn’t apply under Feferi’s Empire, anyway, so her adherence to protocol lies in dubious ethical territory. Still, she feels that something like this deserves some ceremony. His death could end the war.

And she’s curious. She always has been.

The withered old troll blinks at her, lazy and slow. He’s bleeding out fast. If she doesn’t touch him at all, he’s still probably doomed; Vriska shot him in an artery, and the floor is slick with purple. 

He waits long enough that she thinks he’s forfeited them, and that he’s just going to stand there gaping at her as he dies, but then he opens his jaw and wets his lips.

“My boy,” he says. “You killed him, did you not?”

The incomprehensibility of this statement hardly fazes her.

“You have the right to last words,” she says. “You do not have the right to a last answer.” 

He giggles, raspy sounds that scrape against his throat. She’s not sure if it makes that sound normally or because he’s dying. 

“Gamzee Makara,” he says. “You sent him to the land of the double-blessed Shangri-La, DID YOU MOTHERFUCKING NOT?”

The sudden surge in volume startles Vriska, who flinches. “Just put a sword in his neck and be done with it,” she complains. “We’re burning time.”

Terezi holds her hand up to stall. “Your boy,” she repeats. “What do you mean, your boy?”

“I mean my motherfucking BOY. Blood of my blood, KIN OF MY KIN. That scrawny little shit was of my OWN MOTHERFUCKING SLURRY.”

“Who the fuck are you talking about?”

“Motherfucking GAMZEE, blood heretic.”

Vriska slowly turns her head. 

“Gamzee,” Terezi repeats. It knocks the breath from her lungs. 

“That was his motherfucking name.” The Highblood nods slowly, blinking. His eyelids are out of sync with each other, ever so slightly. 

“Yes,” she says, without thinking it over. “I killed him.”

She doesn’t know why she bothers. It’s certainly not because she thinks he has any kind of right to know. But she’s fascinated to see what he does with it — if it’ll anger him, if it’ll bring him any kind of emotion except exhaustion or distant, dissociated amusement.

He just nods with more vigor. “I did suspect,” he affirms. “My faithful did up and tell me as motherfucking such. Yes, they did lay the truth on me, although I did not up and motherfucking yet believe it. I did not learn that good lesson until it ALL UP AND HAD ITS SWORDSTICK AT MY THROAT.” He cackles. “What I always did tell those scholars of mine, my good paltry, ignorant fuckers: the only lessons worth learning are those which you LEARN OR DIE TRYING.”

“That would explain the gaps in your education,” Terezi says. He snickers.

“Perhaps it would,” he says. “PERHAPS IT MOTHERFUCKING WOULD. You teach me, then, sis. Learn me a lesson. SEND ME TO SHANGRI-LA, and put this shit old pusher to goddamn REST.”

So she does.

He slumps over the floor and lies there. The corpse is like any other corpse in the galaxy. 

Vriska gags and stands upright, swaying in place. “Makara,” she says. “He was a _Makara.”_

“The last one, I suspect,” Terezi says. She nudges the corpse with her toe. “I doubt Gamzee contributed anything to the slurry before he died.”

“Handmaid willing, I hope so.”

The room is quiet. Somewhere else on the ship, a crowd of subjugglators are waiting for them. Somewhere else on the ship, there is more blood to be spilt, more pain to be had, more wounds to be dealt. Somewhere else on the ship, the bodies of their crew float in an airlock, limp and cold.

She says, “This feels weird.”

“Yeah.” Vriska stretches, wincing. “It always does.”

“What does?”

“Winning. Surviving. After doing something like this, it always feels weird, for a while.” She touches a purpling bruise on her head, wipes a smear of blood from her bottom lip. “You should get that back wound looked at. Spinal bruises are bad fucking news.”

“As soon as we have a mediculler nearby, I’ll get right on that.” She crouches, taking deep breaths, trying to coax her lungs into working painlessly again. 

“Hey, look, I’m just saying, you shouldn’t be going back into battle until you know what pressing that shit’s gonna do —”

“If I don’t fight,” Terezi says tiredly, “I’ll die anyway.”

“As your moirail,” says Vriska, “and/or matesprit, and/or kismesis, and/or et cetera, I feel obligated to tell you that if you die because you didn’t take it easy for five goddamn minutes, I will be _so_ pissed. Like, you think the Highblood was bitchy? You ain’t seen shit.”

“Given all that I have survived, I feel fairly comfortable in the assessment that my death will not be because I refused to take it easy for five goddamn minutes.”

A memory niggles at the back of her thinkpan. She presses it, and it unfolds into a realization that strikes her breathless. 

Terezi sheathes her sword and heads the exit with renewed purpose, ignoring the pain each step sends shooting up her back. “The Magistragedy is still onboard,” she says. “She might —”

“Fuck,” Vriska groans. “Can’t we just —”

“If your next words are going to be ‘take a second,’ then I’ll save you the time and say no.” 

“I just killed the thousand-sweep-old leader of the oldest religious cult in the galaxy, can’t I have a fucking minute?”

She knows the answer to that question, so Terezi doesn’t dignify it. Instead, she taps her wristtop, and static bursts from the comm.

“Give me the location of the prisoner cellblocks,” she says.

Aradia clears her throat. “Glad to hear you’re alive, Counselor.”

“Thank you. But quickly, if you would.”

“Sure.” Typing sounds. “East wing. Should be a minute’s walk away, they keep them near the Highblood’s chamber for security purposes.”

“Got it.” Terezi shoves her way through the doors and heads down the hallway. Vriska sprints after her.

“Wait,” she insists. “Wait, _wait —”_

“What?”

Terezi takes a sharp left at Aradia’s prompting. Even with her shorter legs, Vriska has to jog to keep up. “It won’t take a long time,” she promises. “We can leave immediately —”

They pass a viewing window and a row of escape pods and, one of them marked with the Highblood’s sigil. Probably his private vessel, kept near his quarters for convenience’s sake. Terezi breezes by.

“No,” Vriska says. “Look, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to get on the pods. We’re going to go join the battle, probably find the _Catalyst,_ complete the effort. We won! Look! We completed our objective! _We fucking did it!_ Let’s consolidate our victories, instead of running out —”

Terezi whirls around. “I’m not going to just _leave —”_

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because it’s not —”

“I swear to God, if your next word is ‘just’ or some bullshit, Pyrope —”

They pass another viewing window. It’s sheer coincidence that they happen to be within view of the event when it happens. 

With a clap like a glacier splitting in two, a ship materializes in the center of the battlefield. It’s a magnificent thing: a triple-tiered spaceship made of several interlocking discs, painted brilliant fuchsia, with black lettering along the center arm that reads _THE LUMINARY._ At its prow is drawn the Peixes symbol, circled in white.

It’s Feferi’s cruiser. It has to be.

Terezi presses herself against the window, drawing her tongue against it again. “Feferi’s here,” she says, and relief and horror make war in her bloodpusher. “Granted, by ‘here’ I mean ‘right on top of everyone where she could die at a moment’s notice,’ but I suppose it’s the thought that counts.”

_Luminary_ drifts towards the Imperial line, breaking the first row of fighter ships and coasting towards the dreadnoughts clustered at the back of the formation. On her current course, she’s headed straight for the _Alternia_.

Vriska’s eyes flit across the horizon, brow knit into furious confusion. “It doesn’t make sense,” she says. “Peixes is smarter than that. She’s dropped out of lightspeed right on top of the goddamn Fleet, they’re going to shoot her out of the sky —”

“No,” Terezi says suddenly. Clearly, the plan sketches itself in her mind’s eye, with shocking clarity, a beautiful, elegant piece of artifice. “She’s baiting.”

“If she thinks the Empress has any moral qualms sitting behind her front lines and blasting her out of the sky with her cannons —”

“She doesn’t think she’s _above_ it,” Terezi says. “She knows she won’t. There’s only one power source that could manage a jump straight from Psari to Alternia in under a night. It’s not a battery.”

Vriska stiffens. 

“She’s offering up her Helmsman,” Terezi breathes. “That’s — that’s kind of brilliant, actually.” 

“That’s _Sollux?”_

Vriska’s horror drips, pungent, from her scent. Terezi remembers the dead, hulking shape of the Helmsman in the _Juggler,_ and she represses her own shudder. 

“You have to admit,” Terezi says, pressing herself against the glass. “It’s clever. It’s the only way the Empress would let her get close enough to mount a serious attack, much less let her board. But this way, she either dies, or —”

“Or Feferi loses, and Sollux spends the rest of his life as a living energy coil. No wonder he was so fucking antsy about it —”

“It’s a gamble,” Terezi says. “Just like the rest of this. If Feferi dies, we’re all fucked, anyway.”

“That,” Vriska says, jabbing her finger against the glass, “is a very particular kind of dangerous fuckery, and I very much doubt that she’s confident enough to roll those dice easily.” 

“Maybe it was his idea,” Terezi falters, although she fails to imbue it with any conviction. “And the call’s been made, anyway. We can discuss it with her, if she survives this, although I doubt she’ll be in the mood to take questions.”

The front rows of battle cruisers part like a giant black curtain being drawn up, and the glossy red _Condescension_ glides out from behind them, moving with all the lethargy and atmosphere of a small planet. The thing’s easily twice the size of the _Miracle,_ maybe the size of the green moon, and Terezi would bet that it’s large enough to have its own gravity. Ridges upon ridges of scarlet metal fold in upon one another, sharp, pronged sides stabbing out like the tentacles of Gl’bgolyb. The body of the ship rises from the prow, practically a palace resting atop the foundation of a starship, so massive that its size defies comprehension. A white trident gleams on the ship’s underbelly. 

A panel at the prow of the ship slides open, and Feferi’s relatively minuscule cruiser glides neatly into the opening, docking in the battleship’s port. Then the panel slides back into place, swallowing the Heiress’ spacecraft entirely, and the Fleet falls back into formation around its flagship. 

Terezi lets out a breath through her teeth.

“We need to go,” Vriska says. “The subjugglators don’t know that we won, yet, they’re probably waiting for their overlord to tell them what to do. Once they find out that we fucked him up, they’re going to be all manner of fucking _pissed,_ and I don’t need to tell you what happens when that happens.”

“Yes,” Terezi says, and does not move when Vriska takes a step toward the escape pods.

Vriska repeats herself, and Terezi remains as she is.

“What are you doing?”

“Kishar is still on board,” Terezi says softly.

Vriska’s face wrinkles into confusion, and then clears with obvious incredulity. “No,” she says. “She’s — she’s locked in there, she’s not escaping, if we leave her there she’ll die on her own, anyway. We need to _go._ We can help Aradia —”

“You can,” Terezi says, attempting neutrality. Vriska processes it.

“No. Shut the fuck up. Come on, Aradia’s waiting for us.”

“That’s not happening.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? What are you actually — she’s your enemy! What the fuck do you care if she dies now or in five minutes — you’re proposing a suicide mission so you can say goodbye?”

“It’s not suicide,” Terezi says.

“She’s going to try to kill you,” Vriska snaps. 

“Do you think I’m just going to let her?”

“I think you’re clearly not in your right goddamn mind, if you want to do something like this!” She tears her hands through her hair. “Not to mention you’re acting like I should just fly off and leave —”

“It’s a matter between legislacerators,” Terezi says. “I can’t — there isn’t a way to explain it. But it doesn’t concern —”

“Me?”

“I need this to be alone. And I can’t ask you to —”

“You almost got yourself killed, the last time you tried the maverick approach.” 

“Not this time.”

Vriska fumes. 

Terezi glares back.

“The Bar deserves an ending,” she says, stubbornly. “It does! And I’m going to give it one. Whether I have to — I know I can do it.”

“I don’t care!”

“I’m not — I need to talk to her.” 

“You’re going to risk your life for some kind of fucking poetic justice —”

“Vriska,” Terezi snaps. Vriska catches her eye and they regard each other silently, coldly.

“I don’t ask you to understand,” Terezi says, quietly, after a moment.

“Good. Because I don’t.”

“But just —”

“You’re fucking nuts,” Vriska says. “If you die doing this, I’m going to get Aradia to pull your ass out of the afterlife just so I can beat the shit out of you. I won’t stop you.”

Terezi, who had a retort sitting on the tip of her tongue, has to take a moment to recalibrate to the sudden surrender. She blinks, tilts her head. “You won’t.”

“No. If it’s that important to you, I couldn’t, anyway.” She sucks in a breath through her teeth, rubbing her temples with clear and immediate regret. 

“There are some things about you and the Bar that I’m not going to get,” she announces. “Never will. Never want to. But I understand when you’ve got a debt to settle, and I understand that she’s your debtor.”

“I — yes.”

“If you die,” Vriska says, “I’m not going to fucking forgive you, Pyrope, if I live for a thousand sweeps.”

Terezi’s bloodpusher tangles itself with horrific discomfort. “Thanks,” she says. “I — I’ll come back to you, you know.”

The corner of Vriska’s mouth twitches. “You think I don’t know a bad bargain when I hear one?”

Dismay must register on Terezi’s face, because Vriska’s expression softens. “I’ll try,” Terezi attempts.

“Better. Keep that.” Vriska backs toward the hangar. “Do what you have to do,” she says. “Then get out.”

“You, too,” Terezi says. “Shoot straight.” 

Vriska smirks briefly. “Be quick,” she says. “Don’t die. Whatever the fuck you do, do it well.” 

“I’ll take that under advisement.” Terezi squeezes Vriska’s wrist. She drops a kiss on Vriska’s cheek and then backs a few steps away. “Go,” she says. “I’ll meet you there.”

Vriska nods, and steps into the doorway of the escape pod, lingering. Terezi retreats even further to keep from touching her again, and busies herself studying the control panel for the door.

“Counselor,” Vriska calls. Terezi pauses and turns her head.

She presses her lips together and stares at Terezi with some kind of quiet acceptance. “If I don’t see you again,” she begins. 

“No last words,” Terezi says sharply. “Remember? No last words.”

“I _know._ No last words. I get it.” Vriska clings to the edge of the pod as if for dear life. “But I wanted you to know —”

_“Don’t —”_

“Love you,” she says, soft. Horribly, awfully, hideously soft. Nothing about Vriska has ever been soft.

“—there it is.” 

The string at the back of Terezi’s bloodpusher tugs taut. She finishes programming the pod and her finger lingers on the latch. She could send it off, right now. Just the press of a button. 

Terezi sighs.

She steps forward and leans her face up. Vriska bends down to meet her, and she kisses her on the lips, quick, clinging. Then she pulls back.

“Goodbye, Captain,” Terezi says. 

She throws the hatch, and the door closes. Vriska can probably still see her, thanks to the Vision Eightfold. As such, she steels herself, and keeps her expression neutral until a red light blinks to warn her that the airlock has depressurized. 

After a minute, the light disappears, indicating that the airlock has closed again. Terezi slumps against the wall and waits for her breathing to even. She closes her eyes and imagines, very briefly, a world in which everything works out all right.

She comes to the conclusion that it is altogether unlikely, and straightens up. Adjusting her canesword, she forges on.

 

* * *

 

They put the Magistragedy in a prison cell befitting her rank. Hers is a round, arched chamber, with a recuperacoon pressed against the far side and a few pieces of wrought-iron furniture scattered here and there. A cooling cup of tea sits on the table. It’s smaller than her quarters on the _Glorious Victory,_ but it’s still large enough to hold a full trial in. 

The Magistragedy faces the far window. Her horns make two clean lines, stark against the abyss of space, and her robe — stained in places with a crusted teal faintly darker than its natural color — brushes the stone floor. She holds her sword in her right hand, its point resting on the ground. When she turns, her eyes are glittering wet. 

“Ah,” she says. “I thought it would be you.”

It catches Terezi by surprise.

“Why?”

Kishar shrugs. “Poetic justice,” she says. “We share a taste for the dramatic.”

“I come by it honestly.”

“As do I.” She hasn’t lifted her sword yet, which unnerves Terezi. Kishar turns back to the window. “Can you see what’s happening?”

Not far outside the window, but far enough to tell that there’s carnage. Ships being rent apart. Pieces of metal drifting aimlessly through the void, torn at the edges, burned. Laser fire scouring the sky in technicolor, like paint spilled over chalkboard. The battle is grotesque to behold, and Terezi does not want to contemplate how many of the broken ships are Feferi’s.

“You brought the Bar armada,” Terezi says, careful. “You knew there was going to be a fight.”

“Do you know what the death toll is going to be, after tonight?” Kishar taps her fingers idly on the hilt of her swordstick. “Thousands. Hundreds of thousands, at least. The banking clans have thrown in with the Heiress; I suppose the latest tax imposition was too much for them. I advised the Squamigan Senaterrors against it, but what did they care? No one listens to good advice until it’s too late to use it.” 

She turns. The outline of her profile is backlit by laser fire. “You understand that it’s your fault,” she says. It’s not accusatory; she’s only making a statement. A fact. A point. A truth.

“The Empress kills more than that in a sweep,” Terezi says, instead of answering the actual accusation. Diversionary. Cowardly, from a legislacerator’s point of view.

“Will this revive them?” Kishar is earnest. She seems to have an almost genuine desire to understand. 

“It’ll keep more alive.”

“How many?” Kishar looks at her. There’s a demand in her eyes that unnerves Terezi. 

“I don’t know.” 

“Of course you don’t. They never do.” She shakes her head. “I don’t either, for what it’s worth. It isn’t my job to know that kind of thing.” She twitches her sword in an irritated gesture, and Terezi flinches. Kishar catches the movement, but doesn’t comment. 

“Are you here to kill me?”

“Theoretically.”

“That’s as clear as mud. Try again.”

Terezi lowers her sword.

“Make a case for your survival,” she says.

Kishar turned, a line appearing between her eyebrows. A choked laugh erupts, unanticipated, from her throat. “What?”

“Make a case,” Terezi repeats. “Argue. Tell me why you should live.” 

“Is this some power fantasy?”

“It is what it is.”

“I’m not going to beg, if that’s what you want.”

“Good. Begging generally makes for a poor argument.” 

Kishar tilts her head.

“I don’t understand,” she says. “There is no possible use I can serve, alive.”

“Are you going to make a case, or not?”

“No,” Kishar says, mildly. “It would be in exceedingly poor taste, I think, for me to do so. Any conceivable case would be either factually inaccurate or astoundingly unpersuasive, from your perspective. I am, however, flattered that you think I could try.”

Terezi lifts her sword again, aiming the point between the Magistragedy’s collarbones. Her bloodpusher rockets along like a featherbeast in free-fall. 

“You’re not even going to try to save yourself?”

Kishar’s eyes flit from her own sword to Terezi’s.

“That was nowhere in the vicinity of what I said.” 

“You’re betting that you can beat me, then.”

“Yes. Obvious,” Kishar says. “What’s interesting is why you would bother offering anything else.” A mocking smile curls her mouth. “Pity? Did you feel some compassion for your old liege-lord? A misbegotten sense of justice, in the middle of a rebellion? There is no answer to this question that is not, at least, exceedingly entertaining.” 

Terezi grits her teeth and lets the urge to be caustic pass. 

“You saved me,” she says. “In the Capitol. I was in the city, when the _Victory_ attacked the subjugglator ships.”

“Oh.” Kishar shrugs, disappointment obvious. “I see.” 

“You saved a lot of lives.” 

“I lost a lot of good legislacerators,” she says. “I damn well better have.”

She attacks with breathtaking speed, her sword arcing from the left at Terezi’s non-dominant flank. Terezi parries and rotates her wrist to force the blade over her head. Ducking in close, and slams her shoulder against the Magistragedy’s ribcage, knocking her a step backward. They break apart, breath coming in short, sharp pants. 

“Is that why you did it?” 

“They broke the law,” says Kishar.

“Is _that_ why you did it?”

“Would it change anything, either way?”

Terezi considers this and catches an attack on her thigh, yielding ground to sidestep it. “Maybe.”

“It wouldn’t,” Kishar corrects. She prods at Terezi’s defenses, almost mocking in her lack of effort. “Do you not understand? None of that matters, now.”

“I disagree.”

“Of course you think it matters,” Kishar says. “You’re still passing judgment.”

It initiates another exchange, this one little more than a customary clash of blades. They move across the room in a lockstep pattern of attack and counter, lunge and parry. It’s more structured than any fight Terezi’s had in perigees. Sweeps, maybe. It demands her constant attention, constant focus on form: footwork, step, parry, exchange, lunge, touch, regroup. Repeat, shift order. Fighting the Magistragedy is like playing high-speed chess on three different boards simultaneously.

Kishar performs an elaborate change-up in stance and shifts her grip to a more traditional dueling stance. She moves elegantly, with short, fast steps. Impeccable footwork. Perfect strokes. Kishar is not the kind of woman who mistakes, be it law or swordplay, and she takes to both arts with natural talent.

Terezi is less scrupulous. She’s good, of course she is, but she’s heavier on her feet, less sophisticated with her moves. She has always preferred the straightforward approach to fighting, without regard for its aesthetic quality; she has always sought the quickest way to end a fight.

Kishar uses an unorthodox backhand sweep engineered to bisect Terezi from neck to hip. Terezi dodges and kicks the tea table at her. 

It turns end over end and dumps its contents on the floor, where they shatter in a spray of broken porcelain and scalding liquid. Kishar leaps over the sofa to avoid it and Terezi backpedals, putting a few yards between them.

It gives them both a chance to catch their breath. Kishar lowers the tip of her sword slightly.

“We’re at an impasse,” she says.

“How do you figure?”

“Well,” she says. “I could beat you, I think. I’m fairly certain. Your endurance is admirable, but your technique leaves something to be desired.”

“I’m not dead yet,” Terezi says hotly.

“And neither am I. A lack of failure does not indicate success. But haven’t you noticed?” She nods towards the window. “There are extenuating factors.” 

Terezi spares a sniff for the window. Without being able to press against the glass, she can’t make out more than the blur of cannons and the pungent ink of space.

“Indulge me,” she says tightly.

The Magistragedy clearly delights in the opportunity to pose as instructor. “They’re surviving,” she elaborates. “Your heretics.” She casts another glance through the window. “Not for long, of course. But the Empress’ battleship hasn’t fired for so long as you’ve been here, and without its support, the Fleet is somewhat at a loss. The question that poses to me, of course, is what I ought to do in light of the circumstances; ‘survive,’ I think, is not necessarily a reasonable plan of action.” 

“And so you have concluded . . . ?”

She smiles wistfully. “It was worth it,” she says. “Part of it. Don’t you think? Wasn’t some of it lovely?”

“What are you doing?”

She puts the edge of her sword to her throat. 

Terezi’s gut plummets. “Wait,” she says. She drops her form, rushing forward. “No, _don’t —_ ”

The sword has opened a slim crevice in Kishar’s neck by the time Terezi can get her hand around Kishar’s wrist, the vein flexing against the thin layer of skin. Terezi wrenches, trying to stop the inexorable push against flesh, and Kishar hisses when she manages to tug the weapon off-course, dragging the flat edge downher throat —

—and then Kishar twists her wrist and a flash of silver darts across Terezi’s unguarded side.

Terezi drops to the floor to avoid the blade’s path, whirling her sword up around to catch it, but Kishar built up momentum behind her own sword that sends it crashing into Terezi’s with a sound that could break glass. Calaman steel meets itself and the jolt sends a shudder up Terezi’s arm, threatening to loose the handle from her grip.

Then the blade of Terezi’s sword cleaves neatly in two.

The steel of it goes flying. What remains is little more than a dagger affixed to Terezi’s handle, not long enough to span her forearm.

Belatedly, Terezi feels warmth spread from her left side. She fumbles for it and finds a cut, delving through her layers of chitin. Thanks to the padding, it’s shallow enough not to worry about immediately. But if she had been an inch to the left, or a minute fraction slower —

“It was kind of you,” Kishar says fondly, “to care. Was it instinct?”

Terezi scrambles backwards on her knees. Without a sword, she’s dead. It’s as obvious as that. It’s —

It’s not obvious at all, because Vriska Serket is a morbid paranoiac, and also in love with Terezi Pyrope. 

Kishar lunges, and Terezi rolls to her left, making her readjust her footwork to make another clean pass at Terezi. It buys her the half-second she needs to draw her gun and fire.

The bullet seems to miss its target, until Kishar drops her sword, clutching her right shoulder. From the rapidly spreading teal stain on her robe, it caught her in the artery. 

She drops to her knees and leans against her sofa, blinking in shock. For a moment, they regard each other with an equal breathless failure to comprehend the last three seconds.

Then Terezi scrambles to her feet and snatches up Kishar’s sword, stabbing it through the Magistragedy’s thigh, to keep her pinned down. The latter muffles a scream through her teeth, tipping her head back.

When the pain seems to subside, her eyes slide open just a slit. They regard Terezi with stunning vitriol.

“I,” Terezi says. “I didn’t —”

“Please,” Kishar says tightly, “don’t say ‘I didn’t mean to.’ I don’t think I could bear it.” 

Terezi stands just near enough to stop her if she tries to escape, but she keeps a few feet of distance between them. She doesn’t see much need to be closer.

Kishar pulls her fingers away from her shoulder and examines them with a chilling, medical disinterest. They’re stained a darker variant on her robes’ color; Terezi hadn’t realized that Kishar’s blood was so blue, but it wasn’t surprising. The highest members of the caste usually got top positions. It made sense that she verged on cerulean.

“You’re a terrible shot,” she says, “if that was meant to kill me. If it wasn’t, you’re an excellent shot, but you’re also a sadist, and I’m torn between loathing and a rather wayward sense of pride.”

Terezi doesn’t know what it was supposed to do. She had only been thinking about stopping Kishar from killing her, really. Beyond that, she hadn’t extended her thoughts to what she wanted to do. 

Kishar presses her hand back to the wound in a fruitless attempt to stem the blood. “This is going to kill me slowly,” she informs Terezi. “It’s going to be very painful. Is that what you wanted?”

“Are you trying to assume some kind of _moral high ground?”_

“No. I’m asking whether that’s what you wanted.”

Terezi straightens and keeps her expression neutral. “I wanted to kill you,” she says. “The manner didn’t — doesn’t matter much.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Would you like me to repeat myself?”

Kishar smiles sardonically. “No,” she says. “I would like you to shoot me in the head.”

Terezi cringes without meaning to. She resents herself for the concession immediately thereafter.

“Or something along those lines,” Kishar adds. “In the lungs, in the heart, or old-fashioned decapitation. Hang me! I’m not picky. Call me old-fashioned; I would like to die quickly, and with a modicum of dignity left to my name.” 

Terezi flexes her fingers around the gun, imagines the smell of teal viscera so thick it drowned out the chalk grey beneath it, and shakes her head.

“I supposed you wouldn’t,” Kishar says, bitterly. “Noble enough not to want a scene, but not too noble to cheat, apparently.”

“Cheat?”

“Duels. The weapon was _bladekind,_ Counselor. You broke the rules.”

“An unenforced rule is a suggestion,” Terezi says. But she puts the gun away. 

“Witty. How very entertained I am.” She tries to adjust herself, and it seems to settle poorly with her wound; she gasps, a clearly unintentional sign of weakness. “You call yourself ethical? You and your high hoofbeast, you’re going to let me die like this? Just watch me sit here and —”

An option presents itself to Terezi. Hesitantly, she reaches into her jacket pocket.

“What are you doing? Is that another gun? Are you going to shoot me in the ankle, this time? Pick them off one at a time, like a game of hangtroll? The blood loss might kill me quicker, I suppose.”

Terezi pulls out the ringbox and offers it wordlessly.

“What in the name of all that’s holy —”

“Open it.”

Kishar gives her a suspicious glare, but she snatches it and snaps it open. Her eyebrow inches perhaps a millimeter north of its usual position, but otherwise she betrays no surprise at its contents.

“Cyanide,” she says. “Am I right?”

“Yes.” Terezi gestures to it. “It was given to me by a friend of mine.” 

“Lovely,” says the Magistragedy. Then she snaps it closed.

Terezi frowns. “That’s for —”

“I know,” she says. “I have some things to say.”

“So you were waiting for me to —”

“I knew you would,” Kishar says. Smiles, smug. “You’re kind, Pyrope. You adopted a gamblignant. You wouldn’t let me die slow. Damning trait. We could’ve trained it out of you, with a few more sweeps, but I suppose that just makes it all the more convenient for you to have belied your treasonous ideals sooner rather than later.”

“You’re not incentivizing me to maintain that trait.”

“Good. You could use a little more edge — no matter. I’ve got — I’ll only take a minute. I won’t spend it criticizing you. Life will teach — it always — you’ll learn how you need to be, in time. No matter. Never mind. You wanted me to argue my case; I will.” 

Terezi wets her lips, but remains rooted to the spot. She wants to run. She also wants to stay. In some bizarre, long-buried part of her bloodpusher, she mourns. 

“First of all,” says Kishar, “it wasn’t all me. Not even most of it. I was the instrument, yes, but not the hand. I was never the hand.”

She pulls back her sleeve. The juggalo tattoo stands out against her skin, its sharp color distorted by a mottled bruise. “You see?” She shakes her wrist. “You see what they did? This is what they did. Look what they did to us. Look what they did to our Bar.” She reaches up and touches Terezi’s knee with something approaches tenderness. Terezi pushes her hand away, and the Magistragedy withdraws it.

“It wasn’t our fault,” she whispers, as if letting Terezi in on some great secret. “It wasn’t your fault. I don’t blame you for this. You did what you had to do. I respect you for that.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. If it weren’t for them . . . if it weren’t for the Church, if it weren’t for the Empress, it all would have been all right. You were right! You were right about it! _Bonds._ Our own bad contract, our own fault, none of it _necessary,_ not really, not in the end. You were right. I should have listened. We could have . . . you and I. Pyrope. I could have made you the best.” 

Terezi tries to move backward. Kishar’s grip around her wrist tightens to the point where her palm starts turning pale. 

“I know so. I’ve seen . . . the things I’ve seen. God, the things you _haven’t_ seen. The things I’d teach you, if I had the time.” 

“I don’t need anything from you,” Terezi says, shaking with something that she thinks might be anger, but it shares a border with terror and she can’t tell where it stands. “Do you understand me? Do you understand that?”

“That’s what you think.” Kishar coughs. Dark turquoise blood spills from the corner of her lip. “There’s going to be a night — and it won’t be tonight, or tomorrow night, or in the coming perigees — but sweeps from now, there’ll be a night when you’ll be given a choice. It’ll be a terrible choice. It’ll be a choice that makes you a terrible person, no matter what you decide. But you’ll have to make it, and you’ll have to decide what kind of terrible person you will be. Maybe you’ll be the same kind I was — maybe you won’t. I would keep it from you, if I could. I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t think it was true.” She wraps her hand around the edge of Terezi’s hem. “I’m rooting for you, Counselor,” she says, wretchedly earnest. “I always have been.”

“You tried to kill me,” Terezi points out.

“And you take that personally? It was my job. You did yours, and I did mine, but I never had anything but respect for you. You felt the same. Isn’t that why you came here alone?”

Terezi has no response. Her mouth opens, and shuts, and she yanks her hem out of Kishar’s grip as a weak reply. 

Kishar ignores this. “There was a point,” she says. “Somewhere along the line — I was you, once. I loved it all.”

Terezi doesn’t say anything.

“I was going to be the greatest legislacerator in history,” she adds, breathy and wistful. “I remember. I knew the law like — I loved it like — I loved it all.” 

She glances at Terezi. Her lips press together in a very thin smile. “Well,” she says. “Here we are. Do you think they’ll remember us? In a hundred sweeps, what we did? Who we were? It was a great thing, you know. The Bar. A terrible thing. But a great thing.” A shudder wracks her. “Don’t answer that,” she says. “I’d rather now — dying now — I shouldn’t live on. It was my Bar. I should go with it.”She scrubs the rivulet of blood from her chin. More dribbles over almost immediately, and she lets it be. 

“But I suppose,” she says, thoughtfully. “I meant to do this — different circumstances — sweeps from now — all the same.” A cough brings something thick out of her wind chute. She scrabbles for her throat, and just when Terezi begins to think the death throes are coming on, her breath regains some semblance of rhythm, and she relaxes. 

“I,” she croaks, “Magistragedy Jonika Kishar, Advocata; Member of the Cruelest Bar, First Order; Legislacerator, First Class — do hereby declare that —” She dry heaves, but her face contorts, and she keeps it down, pressing on. “That Lady Terezi Pyrope,” she manages, “titles — et cetera, et cetera — surviving me, has my voice and nomination in the selection of my successor; that is, my voice and nomination for the position of Magistragedy, following my death, should she survive me, and should the Esteemed Court of Baristerrors find her so suited. Given that they will all undoubtedly be killed if your usurper succeeds, I doubt they will have any objections.” Exhaling, she lies back and tips her head onto her seat’s cushion. “There,” she says, with satisfaction. “ _Fiat voluntas mea.”_ Another cough, weak, as though her lungs cannot manage the effort of expelling the fluid that rapidly fills them. 

“Best of luck with it, Counselor,” she whispers. A smile stretches across her blood-wet lips, meager but satisfied. “For what it’s worth.”

She slips the pill between her lips and swallows. Then she closes her eyes.

She isn’t dead, but the dismissal is clear. Terezi gets up and, despite her training, turns her back on the body. It doesn’t make that much difference — the scent is perfectly clean, with her back turned — but perhaps the illusion of privacy gives the Magistragedy some kind of comfort. After a moment, she hears a cough, and Kishar’s hand falls, limp, from her chest.

Then the Magistragedy is dead.

Terezi lets out a long exhale, and staggers over to the couch. 

It’s hard to wrap her mind around what she’s done. The Highblood was one thing; this is another. There is no floating sensation, no weightless relief. If anything, a weight has hung itself around her neck.

It’s incomprehensible. It’s too immense to have been accomplished by something as simple as a sleight-of-hand, a bullet, the twitch of a trigger. It wasn’t _easy_ , by any stretch, but the death of a Magistragedy seemed like something that should have been impossible. 

Terezi hadn’t entered the chamber aiming to lose, but she also hadn’t imagined that she would survive the attempt _._ Having done so feels a little like a miracle and a lot like a hallucination. 

Kishar is dead.

Magistragedy of the Cruelest Bar.

Dead _._

The quiet rings in her ears like a church knell.

Gradually, on shaking feet, she pushes herself up. Standing is a difficult task. Making herself walk, even more so. Somehow, she crosses the room and finds the broken hilt of her sword, which she retrieves from underneath a chair. 

The blade left on the hilt is no more than a few inches long, angled and uneven at the end from the break. The other part of the sword lies on the floor a few feet away from Kishar’s body, just a length of Calaman steel, useless. She hefts the dragon-hilt and takes a few experimental swings; the balance is all off. 

Her weapon is gone. Perhaps she could have it reforged, salvage the hilt, but that presumes she lives long enough to see a blacksmith, which isn’t likely without a blade.

She glances at the Magistragedy’s sword, which is still embedded in her own thigh. It’s not Kishar’s, technically. The weapon is a ceremonial piece, a scepter, a crown. It’s centuries old, at this point, although it would have been rebalanced to suit Kishar upon her ascension to the rank.

Terezi grips the gold hilt and tugs. It slides free of its hold with ease, hardly jostling the body, and then springs into the air at the twitch of her wrist. Her old sword had more weight to it. Kishar kept her weapon slim, narrower still at the tip, and sharp enough to bleed at a touch — a duelist’s weapon, not an infantryman’s. More interested in demonstrating finesse with her dueling forms than making use of Calaman steel’s strength. Probably tempered with finer materials than the rest of the Bar’s weapons, since it managed to break Terezi’s. Twining curls of gold at the crossguard gives the weapon its weight, and a topaz is set into the pommel.

It’ll do as well as anything. 

That it technically belongs to Terezi now does not escape her attention, but she keeps that justification at the back of her mind, and concerns herself chiefly with pragmatism. That serves to distract her from the hilt of her old canesword, which, after some thought, she rests in Kishar’s hand.

It occurs to her that the cane was the last thing she had left from the very beginning. Before everything else. Most of everything she owned was on the _Pyrexia,_ and after that was destroyed, after the trial, she had with her only her uniform, only the trappings of her position. Her glasses she broke herself. With the destruction of her sword, she doesn’t have anything else. Something strange and distantly sentimental pangs at the back of her thinkpan. 

The ship rocks, and another klaxon blares. It reminds her that Vriska still expects her.

Terezi thumbs the door latch and leaves without looking back. 

It was, in the end, just a sword.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I wrestled long with my youth_  
>  _We tried so hard to live the truth_  
>  _But do not tell me all is fine_  
>  _When I lose my head, I lose my spine_  
>  —Troll Mumford and Sons, _Hopeless Wanderer_


End file.
